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"Done for You" Social Media For Your Church!Mon, 03 Dec 2018 08:05:57 +0000en-UShourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.9.9Vlogging Your Ministry with Trey VanCamphttps://www.butler.church/vlogging-your-ministry-with-trey-vancamp/
https://www.butler.church/vlogging-your-ministry-with-trey-vancamp/#respondThu, 29 Nov 2018 08:20:05 +0000https://www.butler.church/?p=11417
In today’s podcast episode of Church Butler Lunch and Learn series, Trey Van Camp, a vlogger, will share some technical tips on vlogging in Youtube as platform. He will state that anybody can vlog. It is such a good way to reach out to people, as pastors and church leaders to vlog and show that Christians have interests too and that non believers, anyone can hang out with them. He believes that people will be more interested to be a Christian if they will see that Christianity is more than just going to church and reading Bible, and that is his goal and purpose in vlogging.

Kenny Jahng: Hey folks, welcome back to the Church Butler Lunch and Learn podcast where we interview amazing, what else can we say, leading edge, cutting edge leaders in ministry. And one might be the pinnacle of the history of this podcast. I’ve got the one and only, I think he needs to modify his driver’s license to put the word “the” in front of his name, “the one and only” Trey Van Camp. Welcome to the show.

Trey Van Camp: Thanks man. So excited to be here. I just love. I met you twice now. You’re a great guy. I’m super pumped about what you do and I’m so thankful you asked me to do this interview like you know, 20 minutes ago. So let’s, let’s get it done. You know what that’s how we do things, right? We make too many plans. Let’s just get into it. So boom, here we are.

Kenny Jahng: To be very honest though, that is, I think, the shared DNA that we have and that others who are actually killing it on YouTube and the interwebs is this bias for action, right? You don’t know how many people make excuses when they come up to me and talking about my vlogging or anything like that and I’m a newbie in the vlogging compared to you. But like, it’s just amazing. Like anyone can do this, right?

Trey Van Camp: It takes work.

Kenny Jahng: So let’s get back to basics. Tell us who you are, where in the world are you on the interwebs? Because it could be anywhere. It looks like you are in some really nice fancy hotel or something like that. Tell us where you are.

Trey Van Camp: So I’m actually in my hometown where I grew up. I live in Queen Creek, Arizona, so it ships a suburb outside of Phoenix and grew up here my whole life. Went to California for four years for college. And then, I had a big fork in the road. I had a couple of job offers in California, almost took those. One of them was actually a possible. I was going to be Rick Warren’s assistant. There’s a name drop right there already. But it was like a big. It’s a big part of my story because I could have done that, it would’ve been an incredible journey for me, but I’m like, I talked to my wife and she’s like, what do you really want to take away the fame, take away the status, take away the money. And I was like, honestly, I want to go back home and lead my friends to Christ. And she’s like, I think that’s what we should do. I agree. So in 2014 we moved back and then we planted my church in 2016 at the beginning of the new year and we’re about to celebrate our third birthday, which is insane to me and I’ve been vlogging since November of 2016, so I didn’t, I wish I vlogged before I launched, but I didn’t even know what vlogs were until October of 2016. I found out about Casey Neistat. I spent 15 days watching all of his videos and then I uploaded my first one. That’s literally what I did and I didn’t know what I was doing, but I knew I wanted to do that. Yes, exactly. That’s exactly what I did.

Kenny Jahng: Casey knows that he contributed to emerging ministry in Phoenix, basically.

Trey Van Camp: Well, I’ve met Casey, so I told him he was my inspiration so he knows. I actually got to go hang out with them in New York City with like 40 of his best friends plus me. And it was a super crazy events. So, it really is an incredible guy. He’s liking,

Kenny Jahng: You went to his new place, the new digs before it was open?

Trey Van Camp: No. Okay. This was a year ago, like this last week, so three, six, eight wasn’t announced yet, but it was a Samsung event. So he actually invited Dustin. Dustin’s the one who is a quadriplegic and so he’s friends with Casey because of a shout out. Well, I’m friends with Dustin because of DMs on Instagram hustle in getting to know him, encouraging him, and he’s allowed to bring a plus one, especially because of his situation. And so he hit me up and two days later I flew to New York City because of my subscribers. Bought my ticket there and back. So it was a crazy experience. Yes I did. And I got to that. That’s how it got there. That’s how he knew about me, you know, like he started watching all my vlogs, but I had gospel conversations with people that have 4 to 5 million followers and it was, I still keep them up to this day. It was not with Casey. He was way too popular and everybody was trying to get a few minutes with him, but it was incredible. It was really cool experience.

Kenny Jahng: So you are, I guess in the Christian world, one of the real standout pioneers, which is odd to me because Youtube actually has been around for so long. And I guess pastors the allergic to the camera, but tell us a little bit about your vlog. So, first of all, where can they find your channel and, uh, what do you vlog about? How often do you vlog? Give us all the beats.

Trey Van Camp: Cool. Yes, I appreciate this. Yes. So you just look up my name Trey Van Camp while you’re camping in a van. Three words and you’ll find me on Youtube, Instagram, Facebook, all that jazz. I have a website, treyvancamp.com. But also I have my vlogs are essentially how I got started there called DocumenTrey. So instead of documentaries is documenting my life. So I call it DocumenTrey and I officially came up. So I started vlogging November ’16, March of ’17 is when the light bulb turned on that I need to use my name. So DocumenTrey started really kicking for there. I have, I just uploaded my 223rd documentary, but outside of that I have, I think, I don’t know, 20 DocumenTreys and then I have like 18 leadership of videos that I’ve put out for free. And then I don’t know. So I think on my thing, I have almost 300 uploads on my channel and that’s within the last, I guess two years now. And so I’m passionate about a lot of things. So I kind of have content pillars and I know you’ve talked about this a lot and when you, I always watch your LinkedIn videos and your vlogs and I think it’s sometimes super encouraging. Like, okay, I’m doing the right thing and then you’ve also helped me kind of change and reposition what I’m doing. But my content pillars are, my passion is that I want my friends who have never stepped foot in a church to see that I’m a normal person. That I love having fun, that I love my family, that I also loved Disneyland. I’m not the one who boycotts Disneyland, you know, stuff like that. Like, you know, I want to communicate those things.

Trey Van Camp: And so honestly my biggest popular views, I have one, a Disneyland protips has almost 90,000 views now and talk to it, kind of got me what most people found out about me first. And then what’s kind of cool, there’s a lot of Christians stick around and a lot of the non Christian stick around. So I try to do a little bit of everything. And then I do make a lot of vlogs. I call them like Hybrids, where half of it is like a sermon jam with some B roll and then the other half is just me going through my day. Maybe even talking about that topic a little bit more. Uh, and then other times I just stood up, upload my full message. Other Times I upload leadership content. So I’ve made two different workshops, and leadership workshop. It’s really, it’s stuff I’m doing for my church anyways and I’m just turning on the camera and allowing other people to see it as well because I was like, of course I want to invest in leaders in my church, so I thought let’s turn on the camera and best in a lot of people.

Trey Van Camp: So there’s actually churches across the sound so drastic, it’s not a lot, but there’s like 10 different states of church people in different states and churches that are using my leadership workshop as like their small group curriculum. So that’s fun. And then I saw that I took that momentum and now I did it. I just finished a communication workshop. So I’m teaching, I’m actually getting more and more passionate of saying, okay, I’ve done this for two years, I want to teach other people how to do this. It’s like a huge passion of mine because my numbers aren’t crazy big. However, like the life impact is insane. So I got an Instagram DM. This guy got baptized at Mariners Church, which is a ginormous church. And he said, “Hey, I’ve been, I’ve found you through youtube. I’ve been listening to your podcasts and I had to take my next step of baptism because of your content.” So I was like, that’s so cool. So I also wonder like, how often does that. You never know. Like I never knew that guy. I’m just really, really encouraged by that yesterday. So stuff like that is just convinces me, especially leaders of the church, it’s no longer a question should you produce content? It’s how often and even that, like, just who can do it for you if you’re really technologically illiterate because it’s insane. I’m a small church kind of guy. We’re not huge. I like that to say yet, but I’m still able to have like literally in a sense a global impact because of Youtube. So I’m super grateful and it’s just, I would have never guessed the stuff that’s happened in the last two years.

Kenny Jahng: What’s interesting is that flipped right where you’re no longer preaching to the people in the room. You have more people outside of the room. I was just at a conference in Nashville called faithleads.tech And we were co-sponsor from American Bible Society and the .bible team and we worked with the conference organizer to light up a live stream to make it free to anybody that wants to watch, couldn’t come to Nashville. And they had about four times the number of people on the live stream than in the room. And then there’s, you know, on demand access to all the talks and stuff. So it is now, right? It is foolish if you’re not thinking about who is being reached through the interwebs with any of the continents.

Trey Van Camp: The other day someone asked me, like if somebody asked me like, who are your mentors? I only know one of them in real life. The rest of them are on the Internet. Like honestly, I’ve been so shaped and molded by videos online and it’s like I get that opportunity to be that for people, which is so good.

Kenny Jahng: So what about your local footprint? Because a lot of pastors are going to say, yes, that’s great. 10 other states and I’m here call to serve my people in this zip code, in my building, you know, can you share any stories of. Has it brought more visibility to you in your town? Has anyone walked in the door from hearing any of your vlogs or video content? Has any of your congregation actually shared end of your video content with other people to help bring them and invite them on?

Trey Van Camp: Yes. So what you’ve said and I’ve really learned from you just about how I actually need to utilize ads more. So I’ve actually, you know, the plan, your visit model that everybody’s talking about right now. We just made that video for us and so what we decided to do is on our plan your visit page, I show them. I walked through my vlogging style. I walked them through what our church looks like and then they see the location, but then they also, it also shows my blog channel like, hey, you need to get to know us more. Check this out. And I have a whole playlist of behind the scenes ministry blogs, so it’s DocumenTreys, but specific ones that are about the church. So it’s really encouraging for our leaders in our church. And people who go, they love watching, they love me talking about the men of our church.

Trey Van Camp: Like it’s the greatest way to cast vision. I get to save time on Sunday mornings to some degree because I’m casting that vision all throughout the week. But yes, we’ve had several people come through our door and they’re like, this sounds crazy, but I was searching Disneyland and you came up and I learned that were in the same city. And so I decided to come visit your church. I’m like, that’s incredible. That’s, that’s how it’s done. And so it’s been, you know, we’ve got a lot, it obviously attracts younger people because of that and they just can really relate. And what I’ve also found is that it attracts people who also want to do that. It’s attracted a lot of creative people, a lot of people who are just like entrepreneur type and that’s who I really love anyways. So I love that I’m drawing them in and so I’m speaking there, same heart language and so they automatically have respect for me even outside of the Bible world.

Trey Van Camp: They just want to be around me and learn from me because of I’m doing kind of what they want to do, but for them it’s in the business world, so it’s been really good. And I don’t know, it’s just really encouraged a lot of people. I mean it has been, it’s every week, I’m always wondering, I’m praying like, God, I pray that there’s somebody else who you randomly stumbles upon my Youtube channel and they come to our church. That’s honestly the goal for me. I’m a local church guy, so I want my church to grow. If I had to, I hate to say if I had to pick, but I still would probably pick my local church because I just think there’s so much value in face to face, but I don’t think it should be either or. I most definitely think it’s both end.

Kenny Jahng: In today’s world you’re allowed to have the end. Okay. So what’s interesting to me, because one of the things that I’ve always said that no one’s really caught on. It’s like, I feel like you might be the first ever that might agree with me, is that the church lost opportunity. They should have been yelp.com for your city. In terms of content like if you look at realtors, realtor websites now are just putting out content about anything and everything about their town and their life and they’re celebrating the high performing realtors, their websites are championing this life in their city and I feel like churches should be doing that. And vlogging is a great way to talk about the restaurants. Talk about your daily life going into some of the retailers and your neighbors and talk to the owners. And in a way you’re Disney videos kind of like that, right? It’s not church like. So here’s, I guess the question is pastors are going to, I’ve had to, I know that I remember specifically have said, I should be only talking about the Bible and my church and that’s it. I don’t want to be on the record or I don’t want to go and publish stuff about any other part of my life. And I say that’s an absolute no no. How do you respond to that?

Trey Van Camp: I hang out with nonbelievers all the time and the reason they put up with me is because I talk about other things as well. You know, like all I did, which is bringing the Bible, bring the Bible, bring up the Bible. I’m no longer invited to things. And I think it’s the same. When you’re hanging out with somebody’s family gatherings, whatever you’re doing. Are you only talking about church and the Bible? I don’t think so. I think if you. God bless your heart, man, you, you need more unique. So I think it’s a holistic. I think that’s what I love about the Gospel is it affects every part of life. Things that are intentional and unintentional and I would just want to show how. Because Jesus has better. I’m actually able to enjoy the things of this world because I don’t worship those things. So that’s what I’m trying to communicate to them. I’m not putting my openness, but guess what? Because my hopes and Christ and I’ll bring that up every once in a while. I’m able to truly loved this experience. I’m able to truly enjoy this family time, all this stuff. So it’s always my main message on my channel is Jesus is better and I am trying to communicate those truths. But I think it’s more palpable cause when I’m honest and say there’s other things that I really love and it doesn’t have to do with which translation I use on Sunday morning.

Kenny Jahng: You want to be relatable, right? You want someone who’s watching your video wants, needs to think, oh, I can hang out with that guy. I wouldn’t mind. It’s not like I need to. I would suffer going to lunch with this guy. Right? Like you want to. And I just love the fact that some of your popular content is not like exegesis of John 3;16 or slam poetry of the Gospel in 30 seconds or. Right. Like, I love it.

Trey Van Camp: I’ll explain that. That’s where I’m different. And, and a lot of people tell me I need to change because I’m not as searchable. But, like people say, “Hey, make a five minute video with this title of what is John 3:16” really mean to me or whatever, and my content is much more organic, it’s much more living my life and I’ll infuse principles that I have in my sermons, but for some reason I don’t have a lot of joy sitting down just in front of a camera for seven minutes explaining why this song Reckless Love is actually a terrible. Sorry, whatever. I love that song. But you know, people like, I don’t want to get that kind of audience, that I’m fine if all have less of a audience, if I don’t have to do that crap. Oh, should I say that word? You know what I’m saying?

Trey Van Camp: That’s where I’m at. So like who would I follow? I want to follow somebody holistically. I want to see how they lived their whole life and not just talking at the camera. So that’s what I’ve decided. And by the way, I mean, I love preaching, I love it. And I send people to my podcast. So to me, my podcast is that “hey, you want to get some Greek lessons in, you want to get deep, go to my podcast and we’ll get it in. But for my Youtube it’s a lot more for the rest of the world who doesn’t care about Greek unless it has to do with the movie 300.” That’s where I’m at.

Kenny Jahng: Here’s my other question. So I’ve been vlogging natively on LinkedIn because most of my conference about entrepreneurship, content marketing, social media for the church and I think LinkedIn is the next landscape that next frontier and I syndicate to Youtube and other places. I don’t know about you but my views are not that huge but it seems like anyone and everyone in my network has seen my videos, anyone and everyone that I meet in person eventually if not immediately brings up my vlogging and I’m only on episode. I think today our episode 73 went out today. So I’m only two months into it and I feel like the power of video and the reach in my networks and even people I’ve been introduced to, they’ve seen or heard my vlogging and I feel like the view counts are broken. Like there are under representing or do you feel like there’s this disproportionate reach that videos have that say a blog post doesn’t that videos just people see them more? I don’t know.

Trey Van Camp: That’s a really good point. So like I usually watch most of your video. There’s the occasional where I just, it just doesn’t happen.

Kenny Jahng: You’re the guy! You’re the one guy who watches my video.

Trey Van Camp: But that’s something I’ve learned actually in the Youtube, the new Beta studio, they show you your unique viewer reach per month. And I got way more encouraged because I would average like 200 views per video and I’m thinking what am I going to finally cross that next threshold? And I think man, there’s only 200 people that I’m reaching. But then on the Beta studio it says I reach on average 5.6 thousand per month different people per month. So I touched a lot of different people per month. And so there’s a lot, I’m thinking there’s a lot of people that only watch my Monday videos, but there’s a lot of other people who only watch the Friday videos and so I decided to actually having an announcement. So I’m doing Vlogmas, in December. So I’m doing every day in December right up until Christmas. But check this out.

Trey Van Camp: You might need to hold me accountable, but I think I’m going to try, I don’t know if I should say this, but I’m going to try to vlog everyday in 2019. I’m going to upload something every day in 2019 because I’ve realized that what’s been holding me back is vanity metrics and like, “Oh, if I put out more than the views or less, I’ve had enough of that.” Like who gives a snap? I want to serve people. And who knows if that guy who messaged me yesterday got baptized, what if I didn’t post that one content that got his attention because I was scared of when and get enough views. I’m confident enough and I have two years of social proof that people do enjoy my content, so why not put out more and see what happens.

Kenny Jahng: I’ve been vlogging daily and I am nobody. I think anybody can do it and this is the thing is like, I’ve been doing and I think you gotta do you gotta think of your workflow so it doesn’t kill your day. I don’t know how long it’s averaging you in terms of editing the actual video, but for me, I edit, I capture edit and publish all from my phone for the last two months. This past week for the first time I picked up the new hero seven black with hyper smooth stabilization, right? Which in the last couple of videos you can see the quality has jumped up just so much. I mean, it’s beautiful. There is a little bit of friction that does do Wifi reporting of videos. But it takes longer than the 10 to 15 minutes. I’m taking about 15 minutes total to edit my videos here on my phone and publish with this. It’s maybe another three or five minutes maybe. But I’m concerned my platform is, I want to, I feel like there’s a proper place for shame in the church, this might be one of them where I want to be able to say, “Hey, look, you have a phone, you can vlog. If I can vlog, you can vlog.” “I don’t have this fancy DSLR.”

Kenny Jahng: And I say, “look at those vloggers like Trey Van Camp, he’s got those cool like vlogging ideas rigs and everything like that. Trey’s got this beautiful lighting”, “you don’t need that.” Right? So I felt a little guilty going up to something like, even like this, which is nothing compared to what your rigs are. But I’m telling you, it’s so easy to vlog even on a daily basis without hindering your work. I mean, again, it’s taking me five minutes to capture five to six minutes of capture the video and then another 10 minutes right now to edit and publish. And so I don’t know, I encourage you to do it on a daily basis. I love it. I wonder if you would do the same type of video every single time because you must be putting in an half hour to an hour of editing, at least every episode that you’re doing. They’re great episodes.

Trey Van Camp: Yes. So actually my content model is going to be like, on Mondays I’m just going to do a sermon, a sermon splice from Sunday, so that gives me, you know, I don’t have to blog on sundance but I don’t have to. And then so and then, um, I’m going to do another day of the week where I just podcast with my wife and so, and I’m going to record it and just upload it. And so that’s no prep by just, you know, it’s just changing the camera angles, is it. So there’s a few ways to like, you know, there’s a loving way to skin a cat. I lot but we say out here and so I wanted to do that and that’ll help me on the staying consistent. But I love editing. I love storytelling. I love drone shots. I love timelapses, like it’s weird, but it keeps me emotionally healthy.

Trey Van Camp: Oh, I love it. I love it, I’m obsessed with finding the right song and putting it in and I just like during when I edit, I have tears in my eyes because I’m thinking like I get emotional over what I’m making, you know, it’s like, oh, this song is perfect, you know, and I’m going to say Jesus is better at the end. And like I’m in tears at while I’m editing. I love that. Like I just think about my view are doing that too. So I spend an hour, at least on all my vlogs, if I’m vlogging, if it’s actual so much cinematics, although some days, and it really annoys me, but sometimes I just set the camera down and I’m in my office and I talk straight to it for five minutes and I’m honest and it gets like quadrupled the views and it was no work. I just had to press start and stop.

Trey Van Camp: You can’t figure people out. But for me it’s an artistic, it’s an artistic thing for me. And I watch people when they’re more creative, unless their content is just killing it. So my goal is to be a blend and I go back and forth. I want to be at least a blend between Gary V and Casey Neistat, like I want to like resemble those are my two biggest inspirations on youtube and I think with the, with my cinematics that I enjoy plus my type of content because Casey doesn’t have an overload of content. He’s just enjoying his life. But Gary V, he’s got like boom, boom, boom, boom. But that’s what I have with my messages. So I try to blend those two together is kind of my style and I love it. I think it’s a lot of it.

Kenny Jahng: Well, I love it. I love that you’re creatively doing it. I love that you’re up and you’re getting. I can tell you I’m only 70 days into it. I’m starting to think about, and that’s why I got this. I’m starting to think of this as the hyper smooth time warp timelapse and I put that into one. I can see over time that those creative outlets of storytelling are going to start to creep into my vlogging. And this brings me to one of the things I definitely wanted to talk about today. So, people feel a little bit naked or they feel they don’t have what it takes to vlog when when we say you need to start and everyone, a lot of people get it, they feel like I get it. I need to vlog, I need to start somewhere. Two thousand 19 might be the right place to go. And I found out that you actually are doing something about it. And that’s one of the reasons why I’m so excited and I asked you to come on the show today. Tell everybody what you literally, I mean, I’m really super excited because I don’t think this is happening in many other places. What are you doing for people who are trying to get out of the gate and just get started with vlogging?

Trey Van Camp: Yes. I’m so pumped for this. So for the first year I just put my head down and I thought I have a lot to learn. I’ve spent hours upon hours upon hours, Youtube tutorials trying to figure out different styles, just like I can’t even fathom the amount of hours I’ve been researching. That’s one of my strength finders input. I love reading and researching. And so the last two years I’ve been doing that and I finally feel like I’m at a point where I got is used this ministry enough. The biggest thing I hate is when people say, “Hey, follow me and they’ve done nothing.”

Trey Van Camp: I never want to be that guy. So like I didn’t want to tell people, “hey, let me teach you” until I felt like I would have done enough to be worthy of teaching somebody. You know what I’m saying? There’s way too many experts that I haven’t done anything. And so, but actually this black, I don’t know when you’re uploading this, but Black Friday weekend I’m offering, it’s everything’s 50% off the release. I’m calling it kind of my Beta. But, six months ago I bought the domain vlog, yourministry.com. And I’ve just been letting it sit there and thinking and praying through what that looks like. And I just been so convicted, just to be honest, I would rather spend my time on non believers. I’d rather spend my time engaging the lats and, and building my church. But then I got convicted of like, “man, this thing can multiply if I can help some other church leaders just get ahead and teach them what I’ve learned” and I try to summarize everything I’ve learned and figure that out. And so I think I can just really help people skip a lot of the, the bumps in the road that I had to deal with. And so this Black Friday weekend vlogyourministry.com is minisTrey. I said minisTrey, it’s ministry. My podcast is called minisTrey.

Trey Van Camp: I know, but vlogyourministry.com. And, I don’t know. So the style is I already have a couple, I have six topics and it’s to help people like from start to finish. So what’s your audience be. Why is logging so important? But I’m tired of hearing why it’s important. I already know it’s important. So my teaching is going to be, here’s how you do it, because I’ve done these courses, and at the end of it I was like, oh, all you said was I should do this. So to me it’s like, how do I do it? And I realized, no, I mean I need to be careful with this wording here, but not many pastors have vlogs. So how could they teach other pastors how to vlog? So I realize I’m in a unique position. So, I talk about things like I’m going to give like a filmmaking tips and tricks, how to place your camera, certain places, how to edit that and post another episode’s going to be about the importance of creating consistent content walking through a pastor’s, here’s like eight different ways you can make, you can take what you’re already doing and making it into a creation pillars.

Trey Van Camp: And there’s several things. How to build a tribe, how to communicate, how to storytell. So, I’ve put a lot of time into this, and then what I’m going to do is I have some of those videos already up and then I’m going to do a Google hangout with people, go to walk them through, I’m going to answer people’s questions and then I have different, I don’t know how far, how deep I should get into this, but I have like a mentor, I call it a mentorship program where I help people. I feel like that will help people the most of like, hey man, like for me, I don’t want to be in a group because I felt like I won’t be able to get my questions in or whatever. So I thought well I’m going to offer whoever wants it and this weekend only at $200, but it’s going to be for six sessions and it’s going to be like, I think like through February I’ll like help out and then we’ll see what goes from there.

Trey Van Camp: But I’m going to give you like everything. I got an answer, any questions you have and walk help you. Here’s how you edit. Like, here’s how you do this, here’s how you do that. And I think it’d be really helpful. Then I have a cohort, so, if you’re cheap like me, maybe you just want to pay $100 and again, that’s the only the Black Friday deal, but then it’ll be the small group of people that I’m teaching at the same time. And then we’ll all kind of go back and forth. Again, this is all online and what I’m excited about is my third option. If anybody’s in Arizona, I’m actually doing it at my father’s church building right now. We’re going to do a live event. It’s going to be all day and I’m going to go to like, they’re gonna bring their computers or cameras. January 8. I’m doing it soon. I should probably think about the date, but I figured people want to get jumpstarted on 2019. So I wanted to do it sooner than later. And I realized pastors are way too busy in December, so nobody’s going to sign up for a December slot. So I’m going to do it like the first week of January. And just kind of help people get going and hopefully they start pressing upload.

Kenny Jahng: Tuesday, January 8 in Phoenix.

Trey Van Camp: Yes.

Kenny Jahng: I’m going to see if I can get out there.

Trey Van Camp: It’s actually the cheapest one too for this weekend because I don’t know, I just, I really want a lot of people to show up to that. I think there’ll be a lot of value in face to face.

Kenny Jahng: So the mentoring is one on one, six calls six weeks.

Trey Van Camp: Yes. And there’s content for them to watch before we call and then it’s a call.

Kenny Jahng: Got you. And I love on the side. I’m looking at the site right now that you have the actual schedule of the different topics, audience access, attention, creating content that’s consistent documenting toward your destination. Oh, I love this one. Using your tone so that love can be shown, right? Because I think that’s so important. You can’t just copy it. Yes, for sure. Right. Once you find your own voice and your sweet spot, then people start to follow you, I think, right?

Trey Van Camp: Preachers know that I hate my first year like you have to do. So that’s like the encouragement and here’s a bunch of different ways you can try and here’s 15 different types of voices out there that I’ve seen. Maybe you can make your own, maybe add a little bit of everything. But the voice is what gets people. Like I ask people the other day like, what do you enjoy about my channel? And they said, it’s your honesty and your passion. And that’s always been my voice. That’s how I’ve always presented myself. And that’s what keeps them around.

Kenny Jahng: So you’ve got tips and tricks of storytelling and then you’ve got tribes and tribulation.

Trey Van Camp: A lot of editing. Yes. You liked that? Tribes and tribulation. See what I did. The comment section can get mean and figuring out, man, you know, I just want to talk about how do you build your tribe? And I actually talk about the law of diffusion of innovation. You’re so smart. I know you know about that. And so talking about here’s some ways you can get your early adopters and then your early majority and then your late majority. And I’m really talking about all of that. I just had a lot of fun doing. But there’s going to be tribulation and, and I think you know this with the algorithm, there’s times where you did and that’s when you need to keep pressing forward because there’s always an upside. It really in all of ministry, right? And so I’ve seen way too many people start. And then the second the algorithm, because when you start Youtube says, oh good, we’ll let a lot of people watch you because then you’ll get excited and then they just cut you from under your feet and nobody sees your videos and you’re wondering what happened. It has nothing to do with you. It has everything to do with Youtube.

Kenny Jahng: That’s kind of like the first time I’ve ever heard someone say that out loud. Some of us know that kind of stuff happens and it was kind of like as a veteran, it’s like when I was a young kid, I like everyone goes through that like depression era, right? That little fat and it’s not, you know, you got to know something about it. You got to push through it.

Trey Van Camp: Maybe it is self awareness.

Kenny Jahng: So anyway. Okay. So once again, what is the website address? The URL is?

Trey Van Camp: vlogyourministry.com

Kenny Jahng: vlogyourministry.com. And if so I’ll just have a couple of questions because sometimes people are hesitant. There’s that initiative. If they had some questions beforehand, could they ping you? How do they do that? What’s the best way to get in touch with you?

Trey Van Camp: Please, actually, so two different ways. I don’t know what your style is. One is Instagram, just look up Trey Van Camp by DM. I always answer, but if you want some more personal, feel free to text me at 4804480823, so 4804480823. Feel free to text me to have any questions.

Kenny Jahng: Oh my gosh. You’re one of those millennials that puts it all out there. Kind of like cool.

Trey Van Camp: Why not? I know your followers. It’s okay.

Kenny Jahng: Have you gotten a lot of spam or other trolls or anybody texting you or anything like that when you put your number out there?

Trey Van Camp: Yes, I got one and it was honestly one of those guys. It’s like, again, if people are ministry, they get it. It’s that guy who just shows up to your church office everyday because he has nothing else better to do and he’s not mean. So you can’t kick him out, but he’s also not very useful. So you act like he’s not around. That’s kind of where it’s at. So he’s just been calling me and texting me and I just learned to be like, “Hey man, I’m busy. Sorry.” So outside of that guy though, it’s been a lot of encouraging conversations, non believers and believers alike something. So I did it.

Kenny Jahng: No, it’s one of those things, Bob Golf, right? The author, he puts his phone number in his books, asking people to text them the access and transparency. Anyway.

Trey Van Camp: Dave Adamson was the one who challenged me to do it.

Kenny Jahng: Dave Adamson. Yes. Which I think he pulled from Bob. And so, I love the fact that you’re trying to be authentic and being accessible. So anyway, I love the fact that you’re doing this for church leaders. It’s not just the pastor. I actually think that if you’re a team leader in any of the departments of your church. But I think it’s a place where you can provide leadership. If you’re not the senior pastor, you don’t need to wait to the senior pastor to do it. In fact you probably should do this as just one of those frontier things for your ministry because no one else is thinking about it. And I think the latest number I saw Rich Birch just tweet out something that the latest numbers is that the average view time on Youtube is about 40 minutes, which is up 50%.

Trey Van Camp: I saw that today. That encouraged me.

Kenny Jahng: If you don’t wake up from hearing that one step alone who has 40 minutes in their day extra and think about it, that’s what the average person on Youtube is doing. Forty minutes on Youtube. If you’re not there than you’re nowhere.

Trey Van Camp: And by the way, maybe in five years. It’s something else. So it’s always the strategy of where are the eyeballs. That’s where I’m going to be at. So it’s not, I’m careful. I’m not saying “Youtube” because maybe it won’t always be Youtube and we’ll wind up being just like the people right now say TV. No, nobody’s watching TV anymore. So it’s wherever the people are, that’s where you need to be.

Kenny Jahng: Love it. I hope some people check you out and go to vlogyourministry.com as well as checking out your Youtube channel. Thank you so much for just taking a break. Stepping out of your back to back to back to back ministry meetings all day trail. Really appreciate, you know, again.

Trey Van Camp: Seriously. Such a privilege

Kenny Jahng: And maybe we can, you know, jump on a call again and revisit either midstream in your course or even after the course is done. And to see how things are going because I’d love to see the transformation or the progress that maybe some of the people jumping on actually experienced because I think that’s the fun part. But I also think doing that, it’s the term social proof, right? We need to show social proof that it’s that easy, that accessible. You don’t need to be as handsome and good looking. Trey Van Camp to pick up a camera. Anybody can actually pick up a camera and start vlogging today for their ministry.

Trey Van Camp: Anybody? Amen, I love that.

Kenny Jahng: Well thank you again for hanging out with us today, Trey. And again, everybody vlogyourministry.com. And again, one of the things that if you’re not going to do anything, the bare minimum is follow his channel, subscribe and just start to learn the genre and observe. I actually think that this is one of the things that you are, you have a gift right in front of you. You’ve got a trailblazer or a church leader who’s really doing exactly what should be doing by the playbook in front of you and so learn by even just watching and then I think stopping a lurker comment on the videos that he has an actual arrangement. One of my pet peeves is you’ve got to stop being a lurker.

Kenny Jahng: You’ve got to stop being a lurker, only way to learn. So anyway. Thanks, Trey. I really appreciate it. Everybody here, appreciate you hanging out with us for these lunch and learns. One of the reasons we talked about videos because some of you have message me that you want to learn more from people who do video. And so please keep on reaching out, comment below and let us know what other topics or who in particular you’d love to learn from in our Lunch and Learn series. And remember, you can also get the transcripts, the show notes and all the other episodes at our blog at www.butler.church.

09:45 What’s interesting is that flipped right where you’re no longer preaching to the people in the room. You have more people outside of the room. I was just at a conference in Nashville called faithleads.tech And we were co-sponsor from American Bible Society and the .bible team and we worked with the conference organizer to light up a live stream to make it free to anybody that wants to watch, couldn’t come to Nashville. And they had about four times the number of people on the live stream than in the room. And then there’s, you know, on demand access to all the talks and stuff. So it is now, right? It is foolish if you’re not thinking about who is being reached through the interwebs with any of the continents.

10:40 who are your mentors? I only know one of them in real life. The rest of them are on the Internet. Like honestly, I’ve been so shaped and molded by videos online and it’s like I get that opportunity to be that for people, which is so good.

11: 27 So what you’ve said and I’ve really learned from you just about how I actually need to utilize ads more. So I’ve actually, you know, the plan, your visit model that everybody’s talking about right now. We just made that video for us and so what we decided to do is on our plan your visit page, I show them. I walked through my blogging style. I walked them through what our church looks like and then they see the location, but then they also, it also shows my blog channel like, hey, you need to get to know us more.

13:00 They just want to be around me and learn from me because of I’m doing kind of what they want to do, but for them it’s in the business world, so it’s been really good. And I don’t know, it’s just really encouraged a lot of people. I mean it has been, it’s every week, I’m always wondering, I’m praying like, God, I pray that there’s somebody else who you randomly stumbles upon my Youtube channel and they come to our church. That’s honestly the goal for me. I’m a local church guy, so I want my church to grow. If I had to, I hate to say if I had to pick, but I still would probably pick my local church because I just think there’s so much value in face to face, but I don’t think it should be either or. I most definitely think it’s both end.

15:14 I think that’s what I love about the Gospel is it affects every part of life. Things that are intentional and unintentional and I would just want to show how. Because Jesus has better. I’m actually able to enjoy the things of this world because I don’t worship those things. So that’s what I’m trying to communicate to them. I’m not putting my openness, but guess what? Because my hopes and Christ and I’ll bring that up every once in a while. I’m able to truly loved this experience. I’m able to truly enjoy this family time, all this stuff. So it’s always my main message on my channel is Jesus is better and I am trying to communicate those truths. But I think it’s more palpable cause when I’m honest and say there’s other things that I really love and it doesn’t have to do with which translation I use on Sunday morning.

37:55 And by the way, maybe in five years. It’s something else. So it’s always the strategy of where are the eyeballs. That’s where I’m going to be at. So it’s not, I’m careful. I’m not saying “Youtube” because maybe it won’t always be Youtube and we’ll wind up being just like the people right now say TV. No, nobody’s watching TV anymore. So it’s wherever the people are, that’s where you need to be.

]]>https://www.butler.church/vlogging-your-ministry-with-trey-vancamp/feed/0Lunch & Learn // Kenny and Nils Goes on a Rant about VIDEOShttps://www.butler.church/lunch-learn-kenny-and-nils-goes-on-a-rant-about-videos/
https://www.butler.church/lunch-learn-kenny-and-nils-goes-on-a-rant-about-videos/#respondTue, 02 Oct 2018 10:17:31 +0000https://www.butler.church/?p=11213Today is another wonderful episode of Church Butler’s Lunch and Learn podcast with special guest Nils Smith, the author of The Social Media Guy. He will share to us the ways on how social media, and technology in general, doing videos and podcasts and how excuses can hinder churches in doing so.

Moreover, Nils shares how social media can be an effective way to minister. Kenny Jahng together with Nils rants about some of the common excuses of other churches on the improvement of the community. Both shared their “addiction” on vlogging, recording their preaching and how effective technology is that it is very accessible to anyone.

To gain more information and knowledge about effective ways on videos and recordings, you can purchase the book The Social Media Guy by Nils Smith in Amazon.

You can listen to the podcast episode below:

TRANSCRIPTION

Kenny Jahng: Hey friends, Kenny Jahng back for another episode of the lunch and learn. And you know what? I have a confession to make. I am addicted. There’s an addiction that I’m going to profess here.

Kenny Jahng: It’s to my friend Nils Smith. I just can’t get enough of Nils and I hope that you are in the same boat everybody. Welcome back to the program, Nils.

Nils Smith: Kenny, thanks for having me. I feel the same. This is a mutual addiction that we have in our relationship.

Kenny Jahng: I feel like there needs to be a support group and I’ll be the president of it. So one of the reasons why I’m having you back, the last time we talked about LinkedIn video versus YouTube video, we got into the conversation. As everyone hears, follow along, probably knows that I’ve doubled down on daily vlogging. You can catch me the #DailyKJTV and see the journey I’ve committed to doing years worth of video. Already up to episode 35 and we’re well on our way and even after a month into it, it’s been crazy in terms of the feedback and the insights I’ve learned and just encouragement.

Kenny Jahng: So there’s no slowing down. I just came back from Las Vegas conference called Grow with Video Live with Sean Cannell. Put this on 200 plus people, great environment to meet other. You know what, they are called creators, Nils. Did you know that? They’re not just bloggers. They call themselves creators. I feel like you and I, we should change our business card.

Nils Smith: Halfway. Kidding. You got a lot of business cards for the conference.

Kenny Jahng: Yes I do.

Kenny Jahng: For those following along on video. I print cards for every, every event. And so this was my card for the events. It was a YouTube themed, a business card for the event. But yes, I feel I should’ve put instead I wrote digital strategies, but I should’ve put video creator, which is what everyone else calls them. So this term creator, right? Instagram, when they launched IGTV, they call them creators and now I’m doubling down on Linkedin and that term is popping up out LinkedIn creator effect.

Kenny Jahng: You know what? I’m going to change my LinkedIn bio profile and add that as one of my titles. Linkedin Video Creator. So anyway, I want to talk about video because I can’t get enough of it. We are literally trying to upper game in a very practical way. I think this is one of the things that I give you credit for and I’m trying to live out my life here. We’re trying to be practical. We’re trying to do practice what we preach, right? That’s the phrase. And you’re one of the few guys out there that are actually doing it. And that’s what I like. I feel like we’ve talked about all these strategies and tactics and tips and tools, but, you know, at the end of the day, it’s, it only comes down to mindset Nils, right?

Nils Smith: Yes.

Kenny Jahng: Talk about that from your perspective. Right? What does it take? What is there? There’s a mindset that needs to change to go from not doing it, to doing it. And once you unlock it, something happens.

Nils Smith: I mean, yes, you nailed it. There’s the mindset to do it. I think the reality is we all have the tools to do it when it comes to video. And we all have good excuses not to do it. We’re all busy. We all lack the idea. I’ve got one friend, maybe two friends that have like a black magic camera or a red camera that’s like the pro level deal. So anybody with a Canon could say, well, I don’t have a red camera. So until I get that, I really don’t want to put myself out there. Everybody has an excuse not to do video. And I think at the end of the day it’s, we all need to get to a place of not making excuses. And I think back when I started my vlog, I had the idea for it a year before I started. I’m embarrassed that I waited a year because literally Kenny, I said, I need a DSLR to do this. And I just can’t afford it right now. I can’t justify it. And I made an excuse.

Kenny Jahng: 1 to 10, how silly was that inertia waiting for the camera?

Nils Smith: It’s a 12, an extra one to 10. It was ridiculously silly, because, you know what, I did have a camera. I had a good camera. And, you know what, I decided to do it before I actually launched my blog and I used, you know, I had this camera and I had a GoPro camera and I had a web camera. I had three cameras and I tried to make, I tried to make a few videos with those cameras. My first three videos I’ll never published publicly. They were terrible, but I learned by just doing it and then we found a solution. My solution ended up being a $35 webcam, a which is the best solution for me and I didn’t need lights because I had the sun and I used a window. I didn’t need a professional microphone because I already had a podcasting microphone that I figured out how to use that and so I pieced together what I had and have made what, something. I’m pretty proud of my vlogs now. Do I wish I had a DSLR cameras still? Yes. Do I wish I had maybe a professional audio setup beyond the Yeti microphone that’s little more hidden. Yes. And I hope to get there with it, but so far I think I’ve put out about 30 vlogs. I think I’m over 3000 subscribers. I’m redistributing it and I’m getting good engagement because I just started doing it and I’ll tell you my vlogs today are so much better. My gear hasn’t changed, but my vlogs have improved significantly because I’m doing it and when I do have that gear, I’m going to be that much further along than if had I have waited for it. So you just got to do it.

Kenny Jahng: What do you think it takes to change that mindset?

Kenny Jahng: A shoutout: Nils is the author of another book called The Social Media Guy. Mine is you’ll never have this one. This is a premium copy. It’s fine. It is autographed and signed for me, but The Social Media Guy, you have to pick it up and go to Amazon right now. In fact, I give you permission to stop the podcast, stopped the episode, open up a new browser window. Go by the book. Look up: Nils Smith, The Social Media Guy. It’s a great book, great primer to get into all the networks. You’ve met a lot of people. People are writing to you. What does it take? What is it? Have you diagnosed? What’s the tip of the sword to get someone to flip the switch.

Nils Smith: You mentioned the word creator. The term, this is not a creator issue. This is a, I would almost call it like a lazy issue, but a more excuses issue because people have an excuse for why, you know, as a consultant, I’ll often come into a church and help them and I’ll say, well, how come you didn’t have somebody at this door passing out bulletins? Well, this person didn’t show up. They’re going to excuse for why they didn’t get there. You know, what, fix that. Stop making excuses and fix, you know, or why is your stage messy? I think there’s an excuse or anything or why isn’t your website organized? Well, this person didn’t update the website. We make excuses all the time. And I think with social media it’s so different.

Nils Smith: And with video it’s no different. I’m not a video guy and I’m really not creative, but I knew that video was important and I just figured, I mean, I remember when I started online church eight years ago, we started doing video with a little flip cam. This was before the iPhone really had the power. It was early days of the iPhone. And so I used the flip cam with a USB, a little flash stick out that I plugged in my computer and I used iMovie to edit quick videos and I uploaded them to MySpace you know, like you just do it. And I’m still not a creative. I don’t know how to do Adobe or anything. But I bet in the last few, I mean, I don’t know how many hundreds of videos I’ve probably put out, and you figure out, you figure it out by doing it, but it’s there. Kenny, this not a creative issue. This is just an excuse issue. And people have to stop making excuses.

Kenny Jahng: Yes. People have to stop making excuses. That’s a good punchline. And again, I think, you know, I think it’s important and this is what I try to do and this is why I put out five videos on one day of the conference because everyone at lunch was talking about, “oh, they get back, this is what they’re going to plan on doing it”. I’m like, why are you planning, just do. Stop planning. Do. And so I literally would whip it out and I would edit the video wall. We’re walking from one place to the other. Like we were walking to the restaurant. I literally would edit it and before we sat down I would actually, it would be uploading and I would put down the phone while it’s uploading. And people would be amazed. And I’m like, no, don’t you see how easy it is? I don’t know, I just feel like we’re hopping on this too much. But it’s just.

Nils Smith: You know, I remember, Kenny, maybe eight years, seven years ago, reaching out to our friends at Life Church and asking them for their social media strategy guide for their church. And I was like a church, this big that’s doing this much has to have like a plan that I could just look at it because they were so friendly and generous with other stuff and they kind of laughed at me and said, we don’t have a plan. Like by the time we’d ride out a plan, it’s irrelevant, irrelevant. We just do it, you know, like we just have to go sometimes. Now I do believe Life Church probably does have a written out plan at this grow into some things like that. But the reality of social media and the reality of video today is whatever your plan or processes and details are, stop making a plan and literally just do it.

Nils Smith: I’s not that complicated. I’m got to tell you this too, Kenny. My nine year old daughter just started a YouTube channel. She’s making at least one video a week on youtube. She is capturing it. She’s editing. I’m not doing it. I’m not touching the keyboard or the camera for her. She has actually recruited my wife to be her camera person. So she has recruited some help and she is actually, she’s gotten her first sponsor. I’ve never had a sponsor on any of my videos. She’s already had a sponsor and one of her videos, I would say she sold my mom sponsors on one of her videos. If a nine year old can do it, you have no excuses.

Kenny Jahng: That’s absolutely, you know. And getting your wife to do it, that’s called directing. She’s now producing

Nils Smith: Recruiting. She recruited a volunteer. Church leaders have volunteers. Recruit a volunteer she’s using for a camera. We got her, two years ago for her birthday, we got her a little $50 camera that she’s using it. We did get her a Google Chrome book for her ninth birthday. So that’s the device she’s used. It’s $100 chromebook. It’s a $50 camera, which is probably worth 20 bucks now. And that’s her technology. That’s all she’s got. And she’s making it work and she’s already got sponsors

Kenny Jahng: If there’s a right place for shame and the church, this is it. You, as a church leader, should feel some shame that you’re not pushing that record button, and that’s the whole point of this rant is we’re trying to be encouraging to you at the end of the day that the world is going video, don’t be left behind and this is one those times where the church can play, catch up and sync up, level up immediately. There’s so little friction right now. The technology has been democratized that everyone has access to it. You’re not too late. This is one of the times where the church can lean forward and have a leadership position. You can do that in your own community for the good of your church and I think, and if you want to forget about everybody else. If you’re talking selfishly, this is one of the most fun ways to become a lifelong learner.

Kenny Jahng: Just on a very selfish basis, forget about the people. Forget about the community, forget about the gospel. Selfishly, this is a fun place to be, to learn this video production stuff for how storytelling happens. It really is. You meet other people and whether you’re an introvert or extrovert, I think this is just one of those places I implore you to come join Nils and I in the video world and I think this is a very practical thing I can speak for you. I would love for you to reach out to me. I would love for you to reach out to them. I think Nils and I would literally get on the phone with you, Zoom Conferences. We’d record something like this as the first trial right now.

Nils Smith: Yes, absolutely.

Kenny Jahng: That’s why you called your book as The Social Media Guy, right? Because you want to guide people. You want to share your wisdom and expertise and that’s why I love you as your generosity in how you’re trying to share your experience and not just say, Oh, I’m the guru and you’re not. You’re trying to just bring everybody along those. So that’s what I love about the book and the resources you’re putting out. So what, here’s one question then. So what are three types of videos are three things that people can record, literally like if, if people are inspired with this, um, or shamed into action, what should they record today? Literally, what should they record?

Nils Smith: You know, and I would say some of it is take what you already have. And so if you are not capturing your weekend’s sermon, I think that’s a good place to start that. That’s great content that’s already been created. I would say the second thing is.

Kenny Jahng: Wait, let’s camp out there. Because there’s going to be excuses. We don’t have a media team. I don’t have a volunteer. What are you going to tell that person?

Nils Smith: I’ve got sitting right here. iPhone, tripod. This thing costs about $10 on Amazon. I can set it up, I can, I can stick my iPhone in there and I can capture it. My dad has as a church of less than a hundred. And with that, in that church, he sets up his iPhone on the front row. And he Facebook lives out his sermon on Sunday. It’s not complicated. He doesn’t even have to recruit a volunteer to do that. He sets it up himself, and he’s his own camera guy at his church. There’s no excuses. I think to, if your church doesn’t have $10 off, I’ll make a donation to your church for that $10 a tripod camera.

Kenny Jahng: All you need is a stack of Bibles. Even if you need, all you need is a stack of Bibles.

Nils Smith: It really is that easy? So set up your phone, do it. Then I would say the other videos is I would do an invitation. You know, on Friday, here, I’m going to do a selfie video. I’m preaching about this on Sunday. We’d love for you to join us. It’s that easy. Invite a friend,this church welcome you to stand at the front door of the church. This door is going to be open, ready for you, and there’s going to be friendly and, ready to shake your hand. And there’s a seat just for you. And I’m going to be talking about this, I’d love to meet you after church. Create an invitation to join you at church and for church members to be able to share with their friends.

Nils Smith: And then I would say the third one would be, talk it over video. And so I’m seeing more and more churches doing this and I love it is I think the pulpit drives the church. And so if you’re capturing the sermon, I think another great video is process out the sermon. What, whether that’s you as the pastor or whether it’s somebody else in the church, you’re having a conversation around that sermon topic and there’s some things that people, maybe, questions they asked you after church or things that happened where, “you know what, let’s kind of talk it over afterwards”. How do we process this out?

Kenny Jahng: I love that because that’s one of my top recommendations, Q&A, because you don’t need to prepare another sermon that it can be answers of any length that you feel comfortable with. They can be pre-scripted where you literally just take two questions. Three questions and you say, “Hey, today, I’m going to cover three questions that you might have had from the sermon that we had this past Sunday on this topic or these passages. Here’s the first question, here’s my answer and here’s the question” to is just going through questions and answers. I think is very engaging.

Nils Smith: Yes, absolutely.

Kenny Jahng: Now you can get professional. I think our friend Rick Smith who used to be on watermarks staff has a great a series with his pastor Todd that they sat down and that was almost like a talk show, but that was very well received. High view counts. That just shows you that genre of question and answer about Bible and Biblical sermon topics is what people are looking for.

Nils Smith: Yes. Absolutely. And it doesn’t have to be a that, that professional. I think that video series would have done very well with just an iPhone on a tripod and I don’t think that was, I do think it was helpful, but I don’t think it was necessary. And don’t wait until you have the budget that Watermark Church and Dallas has to get started.

Kenny Jahng: Yes, I mean if you’re sitting at a chick fillet and you have got a phone, that’s all you need to sit there and just do it right. I think it comes down to the same answer at the end of the day as we close this out, Nils. You actually picked up a couple of things because people, you know, people always still have that excuse. So why don’t we just give them that low hanging fruit. I don’t know if you have the gear in front of you, but you picked up just one or two things for your phone.

Nils Smith: Yes, I mean, the thing that I shared earlier is I’ve got this little tripod, I think its anchor. I got everything on Amazon actually I got the whole thing to that, but it’s basically a little mini tripod. Then a little iPhone clip. The other thing I have on here, and I’ve gotten several of these over the years, we’ve gotten fisheye lenses, is a wide angle lens, but it’s just a little lens I can clip right on top of my iPhone and it increases the quality or gives me maybe even a different perspective out of the iPhone. And so what we’ll often do is basically take an iphone video and look a more professional look a little bit differently. So this is about $15. These vary from $5 to about $100 on iPhone. And then the other thing I have here is a little road microphone and let me pop this off so it’s got a little windscreen on it. But it’s a little micro plugs right into the iPhone jack. It picks up pretty good audio, especially for like a selfie video. So it’s like a talking video for giving a tour. So a lot of vloggers use this kind of microphone, with their DSLRs. But it works great on an iPhone as well. So I’ve started using this over the last week and so this was about, I think it was about $1,500 to the microphone and about $20 for the windscreen. So that’s a little bit directional mic, right? It is a directional mic.

Kenny Jahng: So what’s the advantage of that? What is that doing besides just the open iPhone mic?

Nils Smith: Sure. So, I’m here in New York City, so a lot of the videos I’m doing or outside on the street and so there’s a lot of background noise and so while I like the perspective of the city, I think it adds, you know, kind of a fun factor to some of the videos. It’s very challenging with the audio. So this allows me to get more directional audio for me and then it takes out a lot of the background noise while I can also have though that kind of hustle and bustle of the video, that’s not quite as distracting as the audio. So, that’s, I say that Kenny, I’m not a video guy. I’m trying to figure this out and improve on a daily basis. I shot it with just this for a long time. I’m trying to spend a little bit of money and make my videos better. That’s what I’m told it does. It sounds a little bit better I think, from what I’ve been told and what I can hear. And so for a little bit of money, I’m making my videos a little bit better.

Kenny Jahng: Yes. And again, from the conference, AVL was the phrase audio, video, lightning. Those are the three things that you got to pay attention to, but audio is the highest on the hierarchy tone pole. You need clean audio and then it doesn’t really matter about the video and even the lighting can be sacrificed. Right? Even here, if you think about it, I’ve got a nice podcast. I don’t have any professional lighting. You are well lit and have a good audio.

Nils Smith: I’m going to take my webcam, which I’m using as my camera. Now I’m going to show you by my professional lighting kit here. Let me see if I can turn it around here. Okay, that’s it right there. You know what that is? That’s a $15 desk lamp from Amazon that I just shined on the wall across from me and it’s shiny and kind of back on me.

Kenny Jahng: Reflective soft light.

Nils Smith: It was $15 on Amazon. That’s my lighting kit that I’m using. And as you said is you’re pretty well lit. That was a good compliment to me. That is my lighting kit. That’s the most I’ve ever spent.

Kenny Jahng: So again, I think that the thesis of today’s episode is you. Anyone can get started at any level if you have a phone in your pocket, there’s no excuse. You can try to incrementally level it up as we have. And I think both of us don’t profess that we’re professional videographers by far, but the traction that each of us have gotten in terms of being publishers of video content on a regular basis. I think we both are raising our hands that says it’s too good to ignore if you have a church or ministry, whether it’s for your own personal platform, or it’s for the church or specifically something for an event promotion, etc. This is something you should be considering, and I think this is the part that I don’t want anyone to miss. Here at Church Butler. We have a private Facebook group called social media for churches.

Kenny Jahng: Search for it in Facebook. It’s called social media for churches. It’s a private Facebook group. I’m asked to join. When you get in there, you can ask questions and get them answered. It’s, you know, both of us consult for organizations and there’s many others that are part of that group that do this on a paid basis for living and give free advice and willing to be the sounding board and mentor and encourage you take advantage of those types of things because this is the media, social media world that we’re in today where we’re trying to be generous with our time and talents and pay it forward. And so, that’s the one call to action. Nils, any other resources or things that, they can actually, I have got one gigantic one. Why don’t you tell them a little bit about the podcast and how they can access your whole serial program?

Nils Smith: Yes, so socialmedia.church, the social media church podcast as a podcast that I have hosted for about three years now. We are 200 episodes in or something like that.

Kenny Jahng: What is the focus? What do you try to focus in on?

Nils Smith: So, so we want to help churches max better utilized social media. So we talk a lot about online church, kind of, I would say that the furthest extension of how churches are using social media and then we talk as basic as possible of here’s how you set up a Facebook account. So we brought spectrum there. We probably pushed the limits of technology more than we’d go to the basics. But we’ve covered all on the podcast and bringing in some experts and some those with different perspectives. And Kenny you’ve been there, right? You were actually the first guest on the podcast and you have been a regular throughout the years. And so, that’s where we actually probably met was at the social media church podcast, long close friendship that has come out of it.

Kenny Jahng: And again, it feels like 70 years ago because the internet lives in dog years, right?

Nils Smith: I had hair when the podcast begin.

Kenny Jahng: Well, thank you so much for stopping by again today. And then I have to confess my addiction upfronts and it’s not going to stop. Obviously after today’s episode

Nils Smith: Thank you for having me. You know other side of the Hudson River sand.

Kenny Jahng: Of course, for everybody else, please leave us some comments and questions that’s begging for you to put your thoughts into action. Get out there and we’re here to help you make that leap, to hit that record button. And whatever questions you might have, there’s no dumb questions out there. Ask them and we’re here to support you. So you can do that in the Facebook groups, social media for churches. You can do that on the blog@churchButler at www.butler.church/blog. And you can also check out Nils’s book, The Social Media Guy. Check that out on Amazon today. Thanks for listening and we’ll catch you here next time on the Church Butler, Luxembourg.

Kenny Jahng: Take care, Nils.

HIGHLIGHTS:

03:24

I think the reality is we all have the tools to do it when it comes to video. And we all have good excuses not to do it.

06:56

You mentioned the word creator. The term, this is not a creator issue. This is a, I would almost call it like a lazy issue, but a more excuses issue because people have an excuse for why, you know, as a consultant, I’ll often come into a church and help them and I’ll say, well, how come you didn’t have somebody at this door passing out bulletins? Well, this person didn’t show up. They’re going to excuse for why they didn’t get there. You know, what, fix that. Stop making excuses and fix, you know, or why is your stage messy? I think there’s an excuse or anything or why isn’t your website organized?

08:39

And again, I think, you know, I think it’s important and this is what I try to do and this is why I put out five videos on one day of the conference because everyone at lunch was talking about, “oh, they get back, this is what they’re going to plan on doing it”. I’m like, why are you planning, just do. Stop planning. Do.

11:30

The whole point of this rant is we’re trying to be encouraging to you at the end of the day that the world is going video, don’t be left behind and this is one those times where the church can play, catch up and sync up, level up immediately. There’s so little friction right now. The technology has been democratized that everyone has access to it. You’re not too late. This is one of the times where the church can lean forward and have a leadership position. You can do that in your own community for the good of your church and I think, and if you want to forget about everybody else. If you’re talking selfishly, this is one of the most fun ways to become a lifelong learner.

15:50

What, whether that’s you as the pastor or whether it’s somebody else in the church, you’re having a conversation around that sermon topic and there’s some things that people, maybe, questions they asked you after church or things that happened where, “you know what, let’s kind of talk it over afterwards”. How do we process this out?

13:49

If you are not capturing your weekend’s sermon, I think that’s a good place to start that. That’s great content that’s already been created.

14:19

I’ve got sitting right here. iPhone, tripod. This thing costs about $10 on Amazon. I can set it up, I can, I can stick my iPhone in there and I can capture it. My dad has as a church of less than a hundred. And with that, in that church, he sets up his iPhone on the front row. And he Facebook lives out his sermon on Sunday. It’s not complicated. He doesn’t even have to recruit a volunteer to do that. He sets it up himself, and he’s his own camera guy at his church. There’s no excuses. I think to, if your church doesn’t have $10 off, I’ll make a donation to your church for that $10 a tripod camera.

17:21

It doesn’t have to be a that, that professional. I think that video series would have done very well with just an iPhone on a tripod and I don’t think that was, I do think it was helpful, but I don’t think it was necessary.

]]>https://www.butler.church/lunch-learn-kenny-and-nils-goes-on-a-rant-about-videos/feed/0Lunch & Learn // Instagram on the Big Screenhttps://www.butler.church/lunch-learn-instagram-on-the-big-screen/
https://www.butler.church/lunch-learn-instagram-on-the-big-screen/#respondTue, 02 Oct 2018 10:12:26 +0000https://www.butler.church/?p=11211In this short episode of the Church Butler Lunch and Learn series, I’ll be sharing some of the tools and resources on how you can show your Instagram feed on screen. The power of Instagram feeds and hashtags can make any church service or event more dynamic, engaging, and memorable.

My good friend DJ Chuang has come up with a great list of these tools and resources, both paid and free, and you can check them out at www.DJChuang.com/instagram.

You can listen to the episode below.

TRANSCRIPTION
Hey friends, welcome back to another episode. We’re going to go through a fun topic for this Lunch and Learn. But before we get there, just want to point you to another place to get a lot more resources if you’re liking this Lunch and Learn series. And it’s basically our blog at Church Butler. You can get there at www.Butler.Church, and once you’re there you’ll see we’ve posted a bunch of other videos and tutorials and other episodes for sure, of things that you’re probably going to want to read and learn about for your specific church marketing communications needs. So www.Butler.Church/blog. Check it out, let me know what you think. Now today’s episode is about Instagram. Instagram is great. It’s happening, and we want to share them. What can you do on a corporate level besides just having people engage on the feed? Sometimes you have offline events and this is what we’re talking about today. How to show Instagram feeds on a projection for screen? So you can do this at your next coming committee meeting in the conference room as everyone’s coming in. You could do it at a youth group event or any other gathering that you have at your church or elsewhere. Or even in the next seven days, you’re going to have a worship service. This is a great thing to do before the service starts, after the service is over, to put this on the screen and have people hashtag photos. And then automatically, dynamically updates the slide show, scrolling through photos that people have put in there with that specific hashtags.

So how do you do that? So I went to Google and I Googled, ‘How to project Instagram onto a screen.’ And lo and behold, the first website that came up was www.DJChuang.com. I’m like, “Hey! I know him!” DJ is a good friend and he’s doing what he always does. He aggregates information and things that he’s learned on the web, on his blog. And so he’s got an article called ‘How to show Instagram Photos Onscreen for Events’. And you can get there yourself at www.DJChuang.com/instagram. And you’ll see he’s curated a list of all the known services out there, both free and paid that help you project or create dynamic feeds based on hashtags for Instagram that you could use to project onto a larger screen or wall. He’s even historically kept a track of those that have come and gone, the ones that have actually been made available and then just have disappeared.

So let’s go through just two of them, just to show you exactly what I’m talking about. The first one is called www.EventsTag.com. They display live Instagram slideshows for events on your screen. They have a free and paid version. They’ve got tons of other products using API feeds and hashtags like printers of the event, or just fun things that you can check out on their site. One thing that they use is called a Social Wall. And this is where they say, “Don’t just watch it. Be a part of it.” So you can tag, tweet and post your photos from multiple social media platforms, including Instagram where your name and photos can be shown on the big screen within seconds, right? So you can actually put a hashtag out there, prompt your people at the event to use a hashtag, and then automatically gets dynamically put up on the wall. So that’s www.EventsTag.com. So that’s one place you should go.

The second one is I think a really neat solutions called www.InstafeedLIVE.com. And what they do is very similar, but they have a couple of templates, and you can actually produce your own do custom ones, but they’ve got four pre-produced templates where they’re designed. And this is why I like this one as my preferred solution, because it will display the actual Instagram image on the screen, but on the left hand side it will actually prompt people for what to do. So I tag your Instagram images with your hashtag to see them on screen. And so this is something that I think is best for live events were there a lot of people, because they’re going to see pictures that just were taking moments ago in the environment, they’re going to recognize it, and then they’re going to understand that they themselves can get put on the big screen themselves. This service InstafeedLive has a lot of options. You can choose any hashtag that you want to follow. You can tweak a bunch of settings of how fast do you want the timing. You can put your logo, customize with your own logo, you can customize the background. You can put it on a loop or just choose how many, how many photos are going to be shown. So there is basically tons of different ways that you can do this. The one option that I do like is that they have a moderation option. So you know, you have the option to either allow them all to go on the screen instantly, or you can moderate them or even ban users who are trying to hack the system or spam the system, as they are. So you know, you gotta watch out for that for public systems. So this is one of the reasons why I like InstafeedLIVE the best, and here I hashtagged Instafeed demo on my own Instafeed, and immediately within seconds, it came up and this is their demo thing. So in their demo you can publish anything to your own Instagram feed using this hashtag, and then within seconds it’ll pick it up and show onscreen in this online demo. And so that’s what I just did. I took any photo of, I took a selfie. I hashtagged it in the comments and I threw it up on my Instagram feed. And as you see or saw that this demo picked it up instantly on the web. And so again, this is one of those things. You’re seeing the cycling through of the images and you can change how fast, how slow you can put your logo on the screen. But on the left-hand side there’s this template where it prompts people very easily, very clearly how to get their own image on the screen as well. Look at that handsome guy on the screen, so there you go.

The article or the list of resources is at www.DJChuang.com/Instagram, and that’s something that you should check. I would love to hear your experience if you’ve used any of these services in the past. If you do and even demo them out, I would love to hear your feedback. What did you like? What you didn’t like? What’s missing from it? These are the types of things that we could share in terms of comments to help each other out here on Church Butler. So Instagram feeds and how to display them on the screen is the subject of the week. Go to www.DJChuang.com/Instagram, and I’d love to hear your feedback. Until next time, I’m Kenny Jang with the Church Butler Lunch and Learn. Remember. Be social Stay social.

HIGHLIGHTS
02:45
The first one is called www.EventsTag.com. They display live Instagram slideshows for events on your screen. They have a free and paid version. They’ve got tons of other products using API feeds and hashtags like printers of the event, or just fun things that you can check out on their site.

03:38
The second one is I think a really neat solutions called www.InstafeedLIVE.com. And what they do is very similar, but they have a couple of templates, and you can actually produce your own do custom ones, but they’ve got four pre-produced templates where they’re designed.

]]>https://www.butler.church/lunch-learn-instagram-on-the-big-screen/feed/0Lunch and Learn // Get Rid of Your Email Subject Line Problems Once & For Allhttps://www.butler.church/email-subject-lines/
https://www.butler.church/email-subject-lines/#respondTue, 02 Oct 2018 10:00:05 +0000https://www.butler.church/?p=11220For this week’s installment of the Church Butler’s Lunch & Learn session, Kenny Jahng shares a neat online tool that will help you generate tons of brainstorming ideas to choose from. Never get stuck in front of your keyboard struggling to come up with a brilliant engagement-ready blog article headline or an email subject line.

But, have you ever considered posting your videos or repurposing them on Linkedin?

You might have been missing a lot.

For today’s Lunch and Learn episode, Kenny Jahng sat down with Nils Smith, talking about Linkedin videos and the opportunities that come with it.

Find out more as you listen to today’s podcast episode.

TRANSCRIPTION

Kenny: Hey friends. Welcome to another episode of the Church Butler Lunch and Learn Podcasts. Really love doing these because we’re able to be on the go meet friends and actually share some of the conversations that we’re having that we tend to have and always say, Hey, I wish we were recording this. So, we’ve got the opportunity here at Rock conference 2018. We’re sitting at the table with my friend Nils Smith, regular contributor, honorable guest, Nils Smith, welcome to the show.

Nils: Thank you. Glad to be on since you have me.

Kenny: It’s my first time in Louisville, Kentucky. How’s it going for you here at Rock Conference? What’s your… this is the first time here for me, what about you?

Nils: Yes, I’ve been to Louisville before, fantastic city. It’s good time. The conference is excellent. I’ll tell you, I’m learning a lot about the Rock platform and I think the church is well served and this area of technology is really developing in the area of data management, data support, data systems. And I think Rock is a great solution for, especially in larger midsize to larger churches. So, I’m really impressed.

Kenny: What I’m really excited about is the camaraderie and the community that’s founded. The fact that this is open source. It’s kind of like this is the way it should be and sharing of resources. It’s almost like they should call this an ACTS church management system. But it really, they’ve done a really great job here of being intentional about sharing of resources, being open hand and generous with each other. Community orientation I think here has been fantastic.

Nils: I love the community.

Kenny: And I’ll just say it here, I think that Rock is going to be the next F1. I put a five to seven year horizon Nils, what do you think?

Nils: I hate to say that because the F1 where it is today, and I’d say it’s going to be the next one that’s going to plummet like it has, but I think rise hopefully to where F1 is and building stability, that’s going to serve the church well for decades to come, hopefully.

Kenny: Yeah. So we’re not here to talk about Rock or church management systems. We want to actually sit down and talk about the rise of video and just going back. We’re using this time to process how we are using video, what we’re learning. And you’ve been doing a great job of vlogging, being consistent. First I just want to get a little practical. You are putting out episodes on a regular basis. Are they published on a certain day of the week or every other week? Is there specific rhythms that you adhere to?

Nils: So, we’re targeting Thursdays, every Thursday about 7:00 AM on Thursdays has been the rhythm. And the thought is that my core content is the podcast, social media to broadcast and the Vlog. And so we typically try to a release a podcast every Tuesday morning at 7:00 AM. Now, I haven’t been as consistent on the podcast, but the Vlog has been fairly consistent on Thursday, so some exceptions to that, but trying to be consistent.

Kenny: What’s interesting is that most consumption happens on an asynchronous timeline, but everyone that’s been in these serial publications have been given the same advice that you have to stick to it as if it’s a weekly TV show or something, right? Like you have to show up and publish on a regular basis, which I think is interesting, tapping into that psychology of the next time you open up your podcast player used to have the confidence that there is something to go to. So I don’t know, I wonder this is the day of the week counts as a time, date, party. Does that matter? Well, I wonder.

Nils: I don’t think it matters that much. At the end of the day, I think it’s for our own, or at least for me, it’s for my rhythms of understanding that I need to hit that target. I don’t think many people are sitting in waiting on Thursday morning. A way there’s going to be another show. I think if you have a daily show that makes more sense. But, on a weekly show, I don’t think the day at the time matters as much, but for me it gives me a target to shoot for, and my team at target, so it’s more self-regulated than it is for an audience.

Kenny: Although I have heard the people who have had long standing weekly shows that they, that they become part of their listeners rhythms. So, they know that when they’re going to go to the gym every Thursday morning, that they’re going to have another episode from Mills. And that’s the type of dependency I guess you want to have in your following them affinity of your listeners. Right?

Nils: Yup. It’s a fun trend, I think, the trend to podcasting and blogging and the community that develops around those mediums. And so I think absolutely the listeners over time develop their own rhythms.

Kenny: Now, everyone talks about what tends to be a vanity metric, but it actually is something that’s real because it turns into community and feedback, etc. is the number of subscribers that you have. I do think that a lot of people have huge numbers out there and people tend to think that it’s easy to get to. What’s been your experience? It’s not that easy to gather subscribers for any given video serial series, etc, right?

Nils: No, absolutely not. I think it’s following on Twitter or follow, you know, following on Instagram or liking a page on Facebook. I think we’re innate natural for those platforms, but YouTube is a platform that a lot people will watch without ever logging in or even creating a log in account, other people have it just because they have a Gmail account. The social aspect of YouTube is still not the norm. And so building that subscriber base is pretty challenging. I’m finding there is a core, you know, there are people that live in YouTube and really consuming content, but building a subscriber base on YouTube for me has been harder than LinkedIn, harder than Twitter, harder than Instagram, and harder than Facebook. It’s the hardest place to grow that base audience. I am finding though there is a snowball effect to it. So once you start building traction it grows. But I’m over six months into a very heavy investment on YouTube and I think I have 20,500 subscribers and I have 140,000 on Twitter. And so, you would think I just promoted on Twitter? I could get a bunch of those over I promoted where in five people that subscribe, it is not that easy, there are a lot of challenges with it.

Kenny: Now, a lot of people look at that and say, oh, well you have video. You can repurpose as you can package it up and ship it out to other channels. Have you been doing that with your video series of pushing it to other channels?

Nils: So, I made it exclusively for YouTube and wanting to be intentional with that, but…

Kenny: Not even IGTV.

Nils: I took one video and I repurposed it for IGTV just to see how it did. It didn’t do that good. And so, I’m not gonna do that again. What I have done though is lately I’ve been repurposing some of that original content for LinkedIn and that’s actually done very well. And so, I will probably continue to that. I will probably do a primary release on YouTube and then three, four months later, have a post release.

Kenny: Well, let’s put LinkedIn aside for just a second. IGTV what we’ve seen IGTV was a big splashy launch of IGTV. It makes sense that, and the interface is clean and it’s easy to discover everything that they said on launch day is true, pretty much. But, are you finding yourself using IGTV anymore? How has it been, a month, two months since they’ve made that announcement or three months?

Nils: Yeah, I mean it’s only been a couple months at most and I don’t find myself watching very much on there. And we tinkered with some clients and we’re not seeing a whole lot of success. That’s not to say, it’s a failure. I think it’s probably going to be a slow growth phase for IGTV where some thought it might be a massive splash. So, I think time will tell, I still think it’s worth investing in. I’m just not prioritizing it at this point yet, but I’m paying attention and tinkering with it.

Kenny: And I think as influencer marketing evolves and on that platform specifically, there’s monetization options that will draw and I think that’s going to need to accelerate over the next three to six months to IGTV has to think about how you going to reward these creators so that they do like you are a creator and you’re intentionally deprioritizing IGTV and so how do they turn it around if you were able to actually make some cash in terms of ads and exposure, then that might be something. So I, yeah, again, on my side, I’ve put over a dozen episodes out and it’s not given me comparable views as if I’ve put them out on Facebook or somewhere else on YouTube, which is really interesting to me that you would think that their algorithms have would’ve pumped up IGTV like on steroids after that launch. But, and I, again, I’m not, in my circles not seeing other guys investing in IGTV. So, it’s, I’m trying to think who’s profiting off or who’s benefiting from IGTV in terms of those creators.

Nils: Yeah. I haven’t seen anyone yet, I have one client. I don’t feel free to share publicly who that is, but I do have one client that in the next three months they’re planning on making a very significant investment in vertical video using their camera crews and shooting things just for IGTV and they’re going to do for IGTV and Instagram Stories and Facebook in vertical. And so I think it’s more of an investment in vertical and even talking about as IGTV is thinking vertical video, more than horizontal. And I think that’s a big deal for Facebook too. I think Facebook wants this, to use more as for vertical video. We’re seeing higher engagement on vertical video on Facebook. So I think it’s, I think that’s the investment more than IGTV from a content creation standpoint.

Kenny: Now, let’s talk about equipment because people nerd out on equipment all the time and I’ve been a proponent of use what you have, dumb it down. In fact, I’m recording this on my iPhone natively without a mic kit or anything like that. We were coming to this conference and had some podcast interviews with some, you know, high level headliners here and was gonna invest in some iPhone mics and other, mics outside of my Samsung Media mic and I know you brought your Blue Yeti on the trip. But I found that, that’s not needed and on video I’m using my iPhone. I want to learn how to or I want to be able to capture, edit and publish all on my phone so that it’s immediate. What are you using for your YouTube videos and are you looking to invest further in the, you know, higher level equipment?

Nils: Yeah, I think the bottom line is quality matters. So, I think you start with what you have in historically with social media, quantity trumped quality of get more out there, and then make that as good as you can make it. But focus on quantity, get a lot of stuff out there. I think it’s changing. I think quantity is important, being consistent, but I think quality trumps quantity at this point. As long as you’re kind of meeting kind of a minimum baseline. So with video that might be once a week on YouTube, with Twitter that might be one tweet a day, but make those posts count and then you improve from there. So, when it comes to video,

Kenny: What equipment are you using there?

Nils: iPhone is a great equipment, but what I do at home for my YouTube blog, I use a Logitech Webcam because I don’t have a DSLR and I’m not a pro when it comes to video, but I want to get a good capture. I’m using some LED lights and just very simple lights on a stand and I’m using my Blue Yeti Microphone to capture the audio. And so I’m using what I’ve gotten the Blue Yeti. I paid 50 bucks for that Logitech camera.

Kenny: It’s an HD camera.

Nils: It’s an HD camera 720 piece, so it could be better. But, it’s good enough for what I’m doing. The lighting is probably where I need to make my next investment. Being in New York space is an issue. So that’s something that I’m navigating. I’m also finding just little things like the light showing up with my glasses, that I’m trying to navigate. So figuring out what are the, I always want to improve quality. So, whether that’s making an investment in a DSLR in the near future or mirrorless camera, whether that’s investment in lights I’m looking to improve, but for me that webcam and the Blue Yeti microphone has given me a pretty solid quality to get my content out. And then they went to, when we say quality, the content is the quality we want the video not to distract from that. I think a lot of people will not have much to say, but they’ll try to put a bunch of video production around it and if you don’t really have a story to tell or anything worth saying that no matter how pretty it looks.

Kenny: Now we say that the human seven average attention span of seven seconds, cold fish or eight seconds sad, sad commentary on the state of human affairs. YouTube video, attention spans have been going down from five minutes to four minutes or three minutes, etc. Where are you aiming for, for typical vlog and are you seeing anything happen when you go longer or shorter?

Nils: You know, five to seven minutes is the target that I’m aiming for, you know, as I understand it, the average YouTube video view length is now seven minutes. It’s the people that are actually watching longer now on YouTube as a platform where Facebook is like 30 seconds. So I think the platform is dependent on what you’re creating, how long it should be. Five to seven minutes is kind of what I’m aiming for. Some we’re a little below that, some are a little longer than that, but that’s been the target I’ve set out for the content upgrading.

Kenny: And then on your channel, have you been creating playlists for your viewers or is it just a serial that gets posted to your channel and then they just get catalog based on date of data publishing?

Nils: Right now instead of publishing, in six months into the content. So as I build it out and I’ve got more content, I’m going to create some playlists, but at this point I don’t feel like I have enough content to really categorize it.

Kenny: Gotcha. And then, are you actually getting any meaningful commenting or do you totally ignore that because the trolls are out there everywhere. Even the Mr. Wonderful Nils must have some trolls once in a while, but are you paying attention to commenting? You look at Gary Vee and those guys that are like completely addicted to responding to comments. What’s your experience?

Nils: I would say I lean into that addictive to responding to comments. I want to hear what people have to say. I want to learn from it. Also want to delete the haters too. I’m monitoring that and I want to create a community. People feel safe to share. And so anyone that that’s kind of distracting from that. I want to be aggressively monitoring that on this channel. I’m focused on growing and engaging and building community on. So, I’m highly actively watching every comment and responding to every comment that comes on the channel and trying to do that within an hour of when that comment comes in.

Kenny: Wow, that’s great to hear. Okay. Let’s go jump back to LinkedIn. So, I’ve been posting more and more in LinkedIn and even just sharing, kind of like behind the curtains things like when I updated my header graphic. I updated it and gave some commentary, did a screenshot and that was one of my highest traffic posts for the month. I’m a LinkedIn, I think is the underdog right now of all the social media platforms out there. Videos tend to do well all my Vlogs when I pushed him out there to tremendously well. Are you seeing the same things on your side?

Nils: Yeah, I think LinkedIn on paying a lot attention to right now and video in particular, I think even the data I’m able to see who’s watching, you know, I don’t know that Mike was watching, but I know that seven people from VaynerMedia who were watching, and 27 people in New York, we’re watching. And so I think the data that LinkedIn is giving us from an engagement perspective is second to none, from an audience standpoint. And then I think, it’s just being video is being optimized and their platform, just like we saw Facebook this happening a year, two years ago on Facebook’s platforms, they’re autoplay functIonality, making sure you’ve got closed captions on those videos. It’s a, in hashtagging is becoming a big deal making. And so I think LinkedIn is a credible platform for video creators to engage right now.

Kenny: Okay. So let’s answer this once and for all. To hashtag or not to hashtag what’s your answer to that question?

Nils: It depends.

Kenny: Oh, come on Nils.

Nils: I think that if you’re on Instagram and do you want to grow an audience? Hashtags are a great way to do that. I think having some consistent hashtags, like I’m using hashtag social media guide for most of what I do, social media that’s related to socIal media because I just have a book come out, it’s called Social Media Guide and so I’m trying to create some brand consistency there. and then I’ll have maybe three or four other hashtags that are related to the specific post trying to insert into other.

Kenny: Okay, so that’s a great tactic. Let’s explore. Why are you doing that? Because are people actually using that custom hashtags? So this is one of the things that, you know, organizations, brands, churches, nonprofits, they asked should we create our own hashtag and start to use it, and then they do it for short term. No one, no traffic. Why you doing that? If, you know it’s not popular jargon are, or are people really using that to drive traffic to your posts?

Nils: You know, at this point I’m trying to start a new one. you know, it’s, I think you have to be consistent over a specific amount of time, to establish that. And then I think the reality is there are a lot of established hashtags that nobody owns a hashtag. And I think that the tension of a hashtag is somebody can tweet or somebody can post on instagram using that hashtag and you can’t do anything about it. You can kind of erase that from other people’s feeds and so I think there are a lot of challenges to a hashtag strategy and really building community around that, but I think there’s huge opportunities around hashtags as well. I think my tension, so a lot of people will say, well, just use 20 hashtags and you’re going to grow quickly. Not Instagram will now flag your account if you do that. But you can do 10 and they’re not going to flag your account. I feel like it, it feels like you don’t really want to engage your current audience. You’re just trying to find a new audience and it doesn’t to me come across as authentic from my engagement. I think people see through that a bit. So while it will help you grow your numbers, I don’t think it’s really going to really deep engagement for the most part. And so, you know, I’m always monitoring. No,

Kenny: I liked the attention.

Nils: I feel like hashtags, the new SEO. The SEO of social media, there’s a science to it. It requires a lot of work and a lot of time and a lot of attention and by the time you figured out a strategy, it’s time to change it and get a new one and so it’s a tough one to navigate.

Kenny: Are you using third party tools for researching, right? There’s tons of tools that tell you what are the most popular hashtags, etc. Or are you just on the fly composing the hashtags after you put up a post?

Nils: So, I have to admit I’ve got a team that does this and they have a tool they use and I don’t know what that tool is right now. I do it for myself on LinkedIn just because I’m prioritizing LinkedIn. And I do it a bit on Instagram, but LinkedIn does a great job of recommending some hashtags and so I follow kind of their path of recommended hashtags. And that’s worked pretty well, especially with the video content I’ve been putting out.

Kenny: That’s interesting. Now on a personal basis or behavior. And when you’re actually surfing LinkedIn, looking for content. Are you ever actually using hashtags to search for stuff on Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn?

Nils: Rarely. Rarely. I think there’s sometimes where I will see a post and I’ll see them use a hashtag and I’ll think, I wonder what other posts are similar to this if they’re at an event or something like that. So, there’s times where I’ll click on their hashtag and I’ll see the other posts. On LinkedIn though, my assumption the way LinkedIn is running their hashtag system is that in some ways it’s, it’s hashing based on other people that are interested in similar interest and it’s almost connecting it to a certain kind of content rather than just a feed of certain hashtags. Now, I’m making an assumption trying to read into their algorithm a bit, but that’s my perception, the way that content is engaging further.

Kenny: Right, so you’re saying that they are using the hashtags to semantically understand what topics that you’re talking about and then potentially displaying more content from others that are using similar hashtags.

Nils: Correct. Or displaying mine behind other pieces of content to people that consume similar content.

Kenny: Gotcha. Need smaller real team that has been doing some really interesting stuff on LinkedIn with people who are the data analytics, right? Do you get some information that’s who’s watched your content, read your content, etc. And then he is using strategies to reach out which ones you reach out to, which ones you don’t and, and following through. Are you doing anything like that? Have you, have you ever tried that premium subscription that LinkedIn offers? You know, one of the big questions I get all the time is it worth to upgrade to do that? And when do you do that? Only when you’re looking for job, do you do that with. Right, so what would you say to that question? When someone says, is it worth it for premium and is it just you should do it all the time or just certain times?

Nils: Well, the first thing I need to say is I’m on Team Panda, so let’s just establish that quickly. The, you know, I just pay, I just did the free trial this month, as I’m getting to know LinkedIn, I have a thousand new connections on LinkedIn from using the trial, so I got so many request,s I reject about half of them, but a lot of people were paying attention to my account. I think because of that service. I tried the InMail, you know, to send people private messages that couldn’t message. I shot for the moon with those messages. I’ve gotten no responses back from them and so for the most part, I think it’s not worth it. I don’t think the value is there for what I want to accomplish on LinkedIn. But, I think if you’re looking for job, I think you absolutely need, you need to use it. If you are doing b to b business sales, I think you absolutely need to use it. If you’re hiring, you absolutely need to use it. It is, Linkedin has a great structure for those people that are kind of in specific situations. I think their advertising platform Is poor and it’s disappointing to me that they haven’t done a better job with their advertising platform, but I think they’re monetizing their network very well and in a way that’s beneficial to those they’re using it for free and not. So I think there’s a good structure in place on LinkedIn and I think it depends on your season. My hesitancy here is if you’re just let’s say you’re just an employee, that’s maybe looking for a job, the minute you turn on LinkedIn premium, it tells your employer you’re looking for a job. And so if you just leave it on premium all the time, I think there could just be a place of, look, I’m just actively engaged on LinkedIn so I didn’t get. Could just raise some red flags that 60 bucks a month I believe now.

Kenny: Wow, that’s steep.

Nils: It is steep. And so I can’t justify it and I think a lot of people would have a hard time justifying it. So I, at this point I can’t recommend it.

Kenny: Interesting. So let’s just finally as we close out, go back to video. So first, have you seen more traction on LinkedIn than YouTube on your videos or is YouTube still king in terms of getting views and people to actually watch.

Nils: YouTube is king. Now, I will say YouTube is now king because I’ve been on there for six months and in growing that base, if I were just starting, my first few videos on YouTube did not have the same direction they do today and LinkedIn would be outperforming those motivational videos and I’m just getting into LinkedIn. So overtime it maybe if I continued the same rhythms, LinkedIn might surpass YouTube six months from now if I stayed just as engaged on LinkedIn. I don’t know the growth trajectory for LinkedIn, but I’m believing the growth trajectory for YouTube is as a much larger play longterm. So, I’m planning to stay focused primarily with the video on YouTube and repurposing to LinkedIn and I think there’s other content types that are going to engage on LinkedIn. But, I’m definitely, I’d say I’m at the platforms aren’t focused on our YouTube, Instagram and LinkedIn from a personal standpoint of being highly engaged.

Kenny: So, if you recall this past year I participated in Vlogmas 2017, where everyday in the summer I put out a blog which was a great challenge. It actually taught me a lot about consistency and discipline and showing up every day, but they’ll also taught me a lot about efficiencies of what’s important in your video production workflow and what’s not, what you can sacrifice and what you need to keep. So, I’m thinking we’ll do that again, but I’m actually taking the opposite strategy of you right now. I’m thinking about going all in on LinkedIn video almost on a daily basis for either short term or a year and then repurposing that and putting that onto the YouTube because I feel like YouTube is the place it needs to be. But, YouTube is just wide open. It’s not like, it’s almost, it’s not even like a Costco or a warehouse. There’s no aisles, there’s no structure. It’s all, it’s just this one browse function and there really isn’t any curation of like shopping aisles in the store, if you know what I mean whereas LinkedIn feels like there’s much more structure. It’s interesting, right? So I think that discoverability might be, probably get more traction on the LinkedIn side then just dumping a thousand videos on YouTube. I might be wrong. I don’t know what your thoughts are.

Nils: So, here’s my hesitancy. I think LinkedIn, I don’t hear of anybody that just dominates LinkedIn, which might say it’s a huge opportunity, but I’ve yet to see anybody halfway invest in YouTube and succeed the people that are succeeding on YouTube or all in on YouTube. And I think prioritizing that platform rather than just. I see plenty of people that just like, I’m just going to put it out on YouTube and see what happens. And what happens is not much happens. It’s people that are really intentional about YouTube are the ones that are really growing and building an audience. And I think YouTube is going to be one of those platforms. I think YouTube is really the future of television, you know, I think if you can build an audience now on YouTube, you’ve got an audience for the next 10 to 15 years, that’s a really significant play where LinkedIn I think can help your business for the next two to three years. I don’t know the stability of LinkedIn Long Term. I don’t know that I have to say same confidence in LinkedIn Long Term where, what if Facebook comes out with Facebook business and they decided just to crush LinkedIn.

Kenny: There’s a workplace.

Nils: Facebook Workplace, totally different things that’s basically Slack. It’s like Slack and Asana and, you know, it’s a different kind of experience. But I, and maybe Facebook Workplace will become more of a network. So I think there’s some interesting avenues there. But YouTube, YouTube is its own beast that, nope, I think it’s basically has one social video and I don’t even want to call it social media, but it is the future of video. I’m a more and more convinced of that. So I just think there’s a long term sustainability of building an engaged audience on YouTube.

Kenny: It’s almost like a reverse IGTV, right? IGTV is trying to cultivate those individual creators and then you would think that they’re going to find some distrIbution syndication partners that are going to bring Hollywood. YouTube’s the other way around. They have a treasure trove of individual creators. Now they’re launching YouTube TV, and bringing that other programming content. And so they already have the other half solved. So, it’s going to be interested in play. Now I mean, there’s these on LinkedIn, there’s a, what’s his name, Lewis, who’s the LinkedIn guy and there’s also a Goldie, I don’t know if you’ve seen the LinkedIn Goldie. She’s dominated by doing a daily video and gotten tens of thousands of views on her videos by doing just a simple daily video on LinkedIn every day. Yeah, I think it’s going to be interesting play. I guess my strategy is a hybrid one, hedging your bets that you wouldn’t choose one or the other, but keeping framing it so that you would make it for LinkedIn and then distribute to YouTube versus the other way around, which I think then just informs a little bit of the content and how you even the tone or the posture of how you engage with your camera.

Nils: Yeah, I agree. I agree.

Kenny: So, okay. So, that’s a lot of ponderings and processing that we’ve been going through. I’m really happy that we’ve been able to share a lot of this back and forth with you guys that have been listening in. We’d love for you to comment and be a part of the conversation because as we were talking at lunch today, if anyone in this space is telling you that they have the be all, end all formula and that everyone else is wrong, you have to do it their way or you’re going to get lost. You need to run because it’s an ever evolving landscape. We are all learning together. And I think the together part is the important thing where we need to constantly be in conversation with each other, trading notes and seeing what’s working with each other and encouraging each other and high fiving everybody in our networks, when they find success. A posture of abundance and generosity versus scarcity I think is one that we are able to take with social media because that’s just what it’s what it’s all about. As we close out this lunch and learn, I just want to do a shout out to Nils. You are coming out with a second book. Can you just give us some of the details? I’m excited to get my hands on a copy and make sure that that’s one of those top recommended resources for clients that we coach and consult with. Just give us some details so that everyone can whet their appetites before they get their hands on their own book.

Nils: Yes. The book is called the Social Media Guide. I’d published, the group publishing six years ago, The Social Media Guy For Ministry. In that book, I highlighted three social networks that are now dead in six years. Things move quickly and while a lot of the strategies are still the same and the same principles really had to adjust and adapt to the changing — changing landscape of social media. I believe too, since I wrote the book, I was predicting that Facebook was going to be where people should focus. I feel more confident than ever that those that are doubling down on Facebook made the right decision and but obviously things like Instagram, I was predicting in my last book that Instagram was going to be one of the social norms of the future. That one I was right on. I’ve been wrong on plenty of others. And so, it was time to refresh what I wrote six years ago. And so I’m excited to get this resource out there and hope it’s going to help a lot of readers.

Kenny: Is this available now? When’s the drop date and where can they get their hands on one? Or how do they order, preorder?

Nils: Best places to go to Amazon? So look, Nils Smith or the Social Media Guide on Amazon and the book will be available there.

Kenny: Awesome. Thank you so much for joining me. As always thank you listeners to join us on this journey. As we do these Lunch and Learns is exactly what we’re doing here is we’re processing and learning together. I definitely want to hear feedback from you guys. I enjoy tremendously when you guys take the time to reach out and share what you’re learning, what you trying out, sharing your highs and your lows because we learned from it all. So thanks for joining us today and we’ll catch you here next time on The Church Butler Lunch and Learn Podcast.

]]>https://www.butler.church/lunch-learn-nils-smith-on-linkedin-videos/feed/0Lunch & Learn // Automating Facebook Ads with Rob Laughter of Summit Churchhttps://www.butler.church/lunch-learn-automating-facebook-ads-with-rob-laughter-of-summit-church/
https://www.butler.church/lunch-learn-automating-facebook-ads-with-rob-laughter-of-summit-church/#respondWed, 05 Sep 2018 04:27:21 +0000https://www.butler.church/?p=11028Today’s a special treat for all the church marketers out there.

Kenny sat down with Rob Laughter, the Director Digital Marketing for the Summit Church in Raleigh, Durham, North Carolina, sharing how churches with small budgets can get away with digital advertising.

Listen as they tackle one of the most powerful platforms that Rob’s using to help manage their church ad campaigns, making the work a thousand times easier and cheaper.

Tune in now on Church Butler Lunch and Learn podcast!

TRANSCRIPTION

Kenny: Welcome back friends for another episode of The Church Butler Lunch and Learn. This is Kenny Jahng, your host. We really, really love it. I keep on saying this after every episode, but I’m loving the feedback. I’m loving that you guys are getting inspired and we’re able to provide a little bit to clicks off center type of content from all the other things that you’re seeing online and the different places. Today, I am at the Rock Experience Conference in Louisville, Kentucky and I’m giving my talk on 4 Paradigm Shifts and in the back of the room I see walking across the back is a friendly face that I immediately doing these computations in my head. I could just see it if we had a video of Facebook profile pics, like just rifling through doing instant matches. And then I said, It’s Rob. Rob Laughter is in the room. I always stopped my whole stalk to bow to him and said welcome Rob. And so I finally got a hold of Rob. We were here in the green room and got a chance to sit down. So welcome to the show Rob.

Rob: Thanks. I was equally surprised to see you in the room.

Kenny: We both locked eyes and smile at each other to the presentation. So, it’s always good to be with kindred folks. And I knew that this conference definitely was legit if it’s attracting people like Rob. So Rob, want you to explained to the, maybe one percent of the audience to have not come across your helpful posts and comments and work and photography and all the stuff that you do online. Share with us a little bit of your, you know, your profile, your baseball card stats for us.

Rob: Yeah. So I’m the Director Digital Marketing for the Summit Church in Raleigh, Durham, North Carolina. We are a multisite church. About to launch our 10th campus with about 12,000.

Kenny: You have a known name Pastor, right?

Rob: A known named Pastor, his name’s J.D. Greear, just stepped into the Southern Baptist Convention presidency, which has been big for us and exciting and challenging in a number of ways.

Kenny: The SBC is, is it officially the number one largest denomination in the country?

Rob: It is, I believe.

Kenny: Yeah. I think some exciting that we worked with the UMC denomination, they’re typically known as the second largest and they never talked about who’s the largest, it is the SBC by quite a factor. And so, you are in a unique position, which does two things. One I would say is it gives you opportunities to see things and experiment and do things that many other communicators don’t, but yet at the same time you’re working with the same tools, the same platforms, and you’re learning and failing at the same time as we all are, right? And so I invited you onto the podcast today to share a little bit about what’s working for you and some of the insights that you’re seeing out there.

Rob: Yeah, so plenty of failing for sure, plenty of like, one of the things that being at a conference like this, we bump shoulders with folks who are at similarly sized to us. It was, or even bigger than us, being at the Rock Conference specifically, like we’re just transitioning to Rock as a church management system and so our team has absolutely no clue what we’re doing. And then, we sit down with like Scott Ballard from the Village Church who just went through this about a year ago and we discover that they’re just as clueless as we are and everybody’s in the same boat together. And the cool thing about the church community is that we can like talk about these things and you know, there’s not that sense of competition you’d find in the business world. We’re all trying to execute on the great commission in our community and our neighborhoods and the way that God’s given our church to do. So, that’s been an encouraging thing. So yeah, in terms of my world, my role really for the past month has been all about Rock RMS. But then, also within my role as Digital Marketing Director, I oversee everything from our website or email communication to our app, and then our social media. And then you, before the show, were asking me about what’s working on social and one of the things that we’ve had a cool unique opportunity to experience over the past year or so is with a Pastor JD and his growing platform. We just launched a nationwide radio ministry, back in April of last year. And we are reaching millions of people across the US with the message of the Gospel. And so it’s been a cool experience to begin to think through what is, what does marketing look like in that sort of environment and how can we, what are our goals? We’re not, obviously, you just don’t want to, you know, just get a content out there indiscriminately. But, when it reaches the right people with the right content at the right time.

Kenny: I’m doing a talk today about the different models of church online. And one of the things that we talk about is what is the boundary of your local ministry, because once you start to have a digital tools to disseminate syndicate your content, you’re going to have people that are coming out of the woodwork and you need some boundaries otherwise, however you’ve got limited bandwidth and resources, right? And so, I’m sure your church is in a similar situation as your page likes go up as the emails come in, etc. etc.

Rob: Yeah, that’s actually been a really interesting divide for us between, you know, we have the Summit Church, a social media presence. Then we also have the JD Greear social media presence and trying to navigate through some of the questions of like, okay, when we get requests from, you know, somebody in Spokane, Washington who heard JD on the radio, like, how does, how do those requests get prioritize with your request from our own numbers and what’s our responsibility as a church to serve those people? But, we have been able to continue to reach people and we get messages through JD’s Facebook and through email all the time for people who’ve been touched by his content, you know, heard him on the radio, let’s do sermons and I’ve had real like gospel engagement with Jesus through that. So, it’s a constant encouragement as much as it is a new territory for us.

Kenny: So one of the things I was asking you Rob was, what is one thing that’s working for you on social and Facebook is one of those platforms and, you know, as you get to manage larger budgets, it’s not fun because there’s all these tedious things that you have to keep monitoring and automation tools or something that comes into play for a lot of people. In fact, I think most churches should be exploring that even with smaller budgets. What’s the platform that you guys are using to help manage those ad campaigns for you right now? And, how are you using it? What’s going, you know, like if you can do us an example of that would be great.

Rob: Yeah. So let me give you the challenge first, and the challenge was, I was you know, for awhile before we hired her social media manager, a one man team, trying to do all things digital. One of those things includes just posting content and getting organic reach and trying to keep up to date with our existing audience. But then too, it’s like we have some growth goals and want to grow our audience and reach more people. And so particularly with some of the changes that Facebook announced back in January of curtailing the reach of Facebook pages moving toward groups and things like that, paid engagement has become even more important than it was before. And that doesn’t mean like, you know, million dollar budgets, but that means that you’re putting some budget behind your outreach efforts, will go a long way. So once we came to that point and we said, okay, well we’re ready to put some, some budget behind this. Just managing ads is a hassle. It’s tedious. You had a, you know, you plan out your campaigns, you need to know, all right, well we’re going to do a boosted post campaign. Well I want to boost this post when it get some traction but not before. And so I got to monitor that post and see like, okay, well it’s at 100 likes now do we want to, do you want to boost it or don’t I not, not want to boost to what audience do want to boost it to.

Kenny: That doesn’t sound like fun to you to do everyday in and out 24 hours a day.

Rob: No, there’s a lot of things I’d rather do than to do that, including sticking toothpicks in my eyeballs. Yeah. So we, I heard of a platform called AdEspresso previously and her good reviews about it and basically the marketing promise of AdEspresso is that it automates a lot of that. So, I decided to give it a go, give it a trial, and thought through like, what’s a very simple automation that I can create in 15 or 20 minutes to see if this will be effective for us as a ministry. And so there’s two types of campaigns that we’re running. We were running boosted post campaigns because the idea is that we want to get our content out to more people and the more people are reached, more opportunities we have to share the gospel. And then second, we want to draw people into deeper relational engagement with Pastor JD, with his ministry, so that they can continue to receive those resources and continue to grow through the content that we’re producing as part of his team. And so, the very first challenge was like, okay, well how do we automate boosting posts? What we’ve done is we’ve created some retargeting audiences, that are built off of people who have engaged with JD’s ministry in any way or any avenue. So that includes people who have engaged with this content on social media as well as people that we’re retargeting who have visited this website because they’ve kind of opted in and say I’m interested in this content. And as those people engaged with the content, they’re going to reach more people organically as well, so that, that paid ad budget that we’re putting behind reaching them is going to be multiplied. And so the first automation campaign we created was to go into AdEspresso and to set up a campaign that says if any piece of content reaches 100 likes, because we only want to boost the ones that are already performing well.

Kenny: Yes, that’s great. So let’s just stop right there. If you are boosting posts, you should not be just boosting posts indiscriminately, right? You should be looking to use it in a way that, I say just use it as kind of like turbo charging juice. So find posts that are doing well that organically people are resonating with and then you’re just pouring fuel or that fire, right? And so that’s what you’re doing there. That’s what you’re trying to do.

Rob: Exactly. And is what we’re doing and it’s working really well. So basically like…

Kenny: So, the AdEspresso allows you to define those rules?

Rob: Yep. So I can say if you know, threshold, you know, and there’s any number of variables you can access through AdEspresso. So if we had 100 likes and that’s our measure of success, you know, a smaller page or a larger page might have different numbers than boost the post for you had this much for this duration. And so for us it’s, I think we have a total of like a $3 a day budget, which is nothing, right? But then, we’ll both boosted posts for three days if it hits that hundred like threshold is what that’s doing is it’s boosting it to an audience of people who have engaged with us. They’re creating more engagement and that audience continues to grow. We don’t wanna stop there though, because we want to draw people into deeper engagement with the content, with the ministry and ultimately with Jesus. And so there’s kind of two ways that they can engage beyond that. One is when reach the blog, we have an email opt in, obviously, so that we can capture their email address and then continue to send content to them on a regular basis and they can opt in or opt out of that. And then also, we want to draw them into the community that we’re building on Facebook through JD’s Facebook page. So the second, automation campaign that we’re running on AdEspresso is a page likes campaign and that’s just a, you could probably set this up and business manager as well, but it’s just an ongoing campaign, reaching those, that audience of people who have liked, JD’s content who have engaged with this content but haven’t yet liked his page. So obviously we don’t want to be running ads to people who’ve already liked the page. And what we’ve seen there is like, you know, over the course of, you know, maybe six or eight months that we’ve been running that, previously, any page likes campaign that we were running was running about 25 to forty cents per like, which, you know, if you’re going after a targeted audience, I find that, you know, fifty cents is reasonable for acquiring a page like, but we’ve been able to get that down through automation to like sixteen cents.

Kenny: Whoa. That’s really cheap.

Rob: And those are targeted people who have proven that they’ve engaged with this content already. Yeah and you know, we want to now invite them to be champions for the ministry. We want to invite them to engage with the content more to share that content in one way that we do that is through our outreach efforts.

Kenny: Wow. So, that’s great. And again, those rules are easily defined within AdEspresso. You’re not hacking the system together. It is built to run almost like a Zapier where you build the trigger and then it executes on the triggers.

Rob: Yeah, it was, like I said, my bar was like, can I set this up in 15 minutes? And because I had defined some of the rules, right? Because I kinda knew what I was trying to accomplish, I was able to do that pretty quickly with the tool. So I guess like, you know, if you’re going to consider a tool like AdEspresso or even consider boosting to social in general, you can’t automate what you haven’t built a system for. And so that time of me doing it by hand for a period and going through that work and that frustration, it gave me the experience that I needed to be able to build that automation.

Kenny: Nice. And then results. I’m assuming that you really are happy with results so far. What, how long does it take before you see that type of results and how you might see some early blips in good numbers, but how long before you’re pretty confident that this thing is working.

Rob: Yeah. So, you have to define and how do we know that it’s working, right? And so that could, in terms of reach, if exposure is what you’re going forward, that could be interpreted in terms of paid likes, if you want to grow an audience and ultimately like we’re trying to draw people into engagement with the ministry and so that means continued engagement with content. But then, ultimately we’d like people to support the ministry as well. And so just at the top level metrics of like audience size, like you should see your audience begin to grow immediately. When I started in, you know, doing some of the, the test campaigns that I did before, just automation, like we could see bumps and growth. But then once I saw it, but like my capacity was limited and I would forget, I would get distracted by another project and not boost anything for two or three weeks. And so like overall growth wasn’t pretty steady until I started using the automation tools and then it’s doing it all in the background. I can set it and forget it, check out once a month and make sure that everything, all my metrics are good. And so once that happened, like it was like the hockey stick on the graph, like I’ve got our paid likes, like in front of us right now and you can see them, but our folks at home cans, and you can see these bumps, right? There’s bumps, but then there’s also like an upward hockey stick as a friend. And that’s been just one. It’s like a relief for me that I don’t need to be thinking about that, but you can see those results.

Kenny: So, practically speaking, let see, as practical as possible, how many hours a week do you think this is saving you a by managing it through AdEspresso versus doing everything manually? Is it an hour a day, hour a week?

Rob: Probably five hours a week. So, if you average that out and put an hour a day,

Kenny: Can you imagine if that’s almost, you got lunch in there, you’ve got meetings in there that’s a full day’s worth of productivity that you’re saving.

Rob: Yeah. And that’s the way I pitched it to our leadership team to, cause like AdEspresso does carry cost. I think it’s like 50 bucks a month. But in order to get that budget and it’s just like, I think our, one of our executives asked me like, well, so how much time is it going to save you? I was like, probably,

Kenny: 50 bucks a month, four hours a week. So, can you save $12.50 cents worth of labor,

Rob: Right, it’s like you probably save them 500 bucks of labor with a $50 investment. So it was no brainer, I think particularly with smaller churches, I always hear that we don’t have a budget question, but you have to look at your time and say your time, posts something, whether you’re a volunteer or not. And this, like a tool like this, it doesn’t even have to be the sole tool like this will save so much time that it pays for itself.

Kenny: So, can you talk to the communicators out there where they have internal audiences that may not be fully educated or they don’t totally get it? Where are you coming to them and say, hey look, we can increase our total likes on the page by thousands over the course of the year and the investment’s going to be cheap and no matter what you value, like whether it’s fifty cents, twenty cents, two cents. How do you explain to somebody what the value of 1000, 2000, 3000 additional likes? How do you explain that internally?

Rob: Yeah. So, it all comes back to goals, like what is our, what are our goals as a ministry? What are our goals as a church? This is specifically for an external ministry of our church, and so as a kid carries a different set of goals than our internal ministries for an internal ministry, like just look at the cost of like printing a piece of paper and putting it in everybody’s hand. With a church our size, we would have $3,000 print jobs for the weekend, whereas I can reach…

Kenny: And they did at one point, right? Like before all this digital stuff, that’s what they’re spending, right?

Rob: We still do, but don’t tell anybody. A lot less, a lot less than we used to and hopefully as we transitioned Rock even less so. But I mean churches won’t bat an eye drop one hundreds or thousands of dollars for printing costs, but then a couple hundred bucks a month for digital ads that I can reach exponentially more people, and often more effectively than I came up with a print piece. You know, so I’d say the first thing that you need to do is have that question in your head and have that conversation with the key stakeholders in your church. If we’re putting budget behind this, can we have some budget to experiment in this area? And then put it in terms that correlate with their goals. So, if your goals are, we want to get, you know, we’re doing this print piece because we want everybody in our church to know about this event. We can do that for three grand with a piece of paper. I can do that for 150 bucks with digital ads. And it could be a naughty, like a dichotomy of I have to do this or this, but..

Kenny: So, I’m going to be a naysayer again, you know, our traditional methods, we actually got conversions. You’re saying digital is going to be that much cheaper to execute in terms of expenses, but to people really follow through call to actions on ads on content that they see, is that something that you can concretely explain or is that something you have to be philosophical?

Rob: Right. So, I would say for that question back to the naysayer and say, can you track conversions through your print pieces? Whereas with digital, particularly if you’re running through, as a event system with an RSVP, you can use tracking pixels to say, this is exactly how many people registered through this campaign or this tool and then put it in very concrete numbers to say here’s the data. Data doesn’t lie. In this case, 70 percent of our signups came through that Facebook ad and we did it at a fraction of the cost of prints. Again, that’s not to say that prints are bad, print has its place and I think print needs to be used as another marketing channel, but you’re asking the questions of how do these pieces work together to accomplish a goal.

Kenny: Gotcha. Are you using AdEspresso for all your advertising or just some of these specific campaigns? Because I think people get confused when third party automation tools come up the that they feel like they’re going to lose all control, some robots going to take over the entire world. And is there any risk that you will be replaced in your seat?

Rob: No, so when I the human need to set it up right, and I, the human need to monitor and make sure that we’re actually accomplish parables. Second, anytime I do just a small campaign, if it’s for like, you know, we did a small ad budget for an event, then I’ll probably just get a business manager and set that up. But then, all that data’s being pulled into AdEspresso as well so I can continue to optimize, If I want to.

Kenny: Got you, scale of one to 10, how easy was it for you to ramp up on AdEspresso? The cost doesn’t seem to be that prohibited for most churches, even smaller ones, but what about the time invested to actually be able to set up a campaign from scratch?

Rob: Yeah. So, it was quick. There was I think I probably started at a trial one time and I just didn’t have the mental bandwidth to put behind it and forgot about it, but then when I came to it and resolve that is going to give it a good go and it was 15 or 20 minutes to set up. So it’s again, no brainer.

Kenny: Okay. And then, currently what, you know, what’s the next step after this? Is it automating more stuff? Is it creating new campaigns? Is it creating new content on your site? What’s the next step for you guys?

Rob: Yeah, so one of the big advantages of automation is that it frees up some, some mental bandwidth for me and so I can think of new areas of growth and so that could be, you know, we don’t have any plans, like if we were to ramp up on what we’re doing with paid ads right now, we’d probably just increased budget, because the system’s working. And so, now that we have a system is working to kind of bring people into that first level of engagement with the ministry and with content now I can be thinking about how do we help people take that next step and help them to ultimately we want people to be involved in a local church. We don’t want them to listen to JD on the radio all day long. And so, how can we use digital tools to help people move in that direction? So that’d be the next step for us as thank you through next steps of engagement. One thing since we’re on the topic of Rock and data is that we’re thinking about how can we use marketing automation within the ministry to start to see behavioral activity and suggest content that’s relevant to them and suggest next steps that meet people where they are rather than just kind of trying to have generic next step for everybody.

Kenny: Yeah, I think that was the power. And I always say that the job of the marketer is to sort your database money’s in your list no matter what industry you’re in. Churches in particular need to be cultivating their list, tagging them. And so, that you can actually deliver appropriate content, the appropriate subgroups at the appropriate time.

Rob: Yeah, I would agree with that. If you were a part of the center for church communication, I have a resource in there that is all about email list segmentation so you can get that,

Kenny: The courageous storytellers, right?

Rob: That’s right. Yep. So like, a list will only go so far as like the work that you put into it. And so if you have a big list of just emails and no data associated with it, you might see one to two percent conversion rate on an email that sent out, no matter what that conversion is. But, if you’re sending stuff that is targeted to me, I’m going to respond a lot more positively than that. And you’re going to see a significant increase in your conversion rate.

Kenny: Great. Well thank you so much for opening up your laptop and sharing some of the data points and you know, views of what you guys are trying to do, and in the early successes in your campaigns, really wish you the best of luck as you go forward in this next chapter with your pastor’s tenure and I think it’s going to be interesting to see what you learn over the next several years. Right?

Rob: Absolutely. We’re excited for it, too.

Kenny: So, if someone was listening in today, wants to get in touch with you directly, what is the best way to do that? Can you share your address to send the homing pigeon or the telegram or whether your details or to get in touch with you?

Rob: Yes, I’m Rob Laughter on all the socials, spelled like laughter. So Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, RobLaughter.com. Any number of those places will work. I pretty much live on Facebook, for my job, so I’m there 24/7 just about.

Kenny: Yeah, it was great and we really appreciate all the, honestly the chiming in and sharing of wisdom and resources and encouragement that you do in all the Facebook groups that we see within just, you’re one of the good guys, Rob. So, really love to point that out that this is a community and you get what you get out of it. We put it in your modeling for us, that good behavior. So really thank you for all that.

Rob: Well, thank you as well for being such a prolific content creator and always having an iPhone in your hand and…

Kenny: Yeah, and again, I want to point out right. So, even at this pro level, we could have opted, I’ve got, you know, professional podcasting equipment in my bag, but we are literally podcasting off of an iPhone with an iPhone app without even, with an external mic because in my philosophy it’s you want a bias for action and version one is better than version none and you want quality contents over quality, nothing. And so hopefully we’re modeling here with this podcast. Even that, I’d rather catch Rob and share his wisdom in the hallways of a conference than to miss this opportunity because we have to schedule something with like all this pro gear. So.

Rob: Which is why my podcast had five episodes.

Kenny: Yeah. So, we are one of the things that you need to call out Rob’s, I’ve been pushing him. We want us to hear and see more Rob. He needs to start blogging or platforming and podcasting, writing a book or something to share all the wisdom that he has through the many experiences that he’s a communicator. So, thank you so much for joining us today. We’d love for you to help us share this resource with others. The best way you can do that is smash that like button or go to iTunes and leave a review. So, that other church communicators out there discover this contribute and be a part of the community. Thanks for listening to today’s Lunch and Learn Podcast here at Church Butler.

]]>https://www.butler.church/lunch-learn-automating-facebook-ads-with-rob-laughter-of-summit-church/feed/0September is Here.https://www.butler.church/september-is-here/
https://www.butler.church/september-is-here/#respondWed, 29 Aug 2018 23:54:52 +0000https://www.butler.church/?p=11023Check out what’s inside the September collection of the Church Butler Membership.

Download all of these graphics, videos and pre-written status-update content at www.butler.church

TRANSCRIPTION
Kenny Jahng here with the Lunch and Learn Podcast, excited for today’s show because I love when we get really nitty-gritty, practical, tactical, and that’s what I’m trying to do with today’s episode and with the Lunch and Learns in general. Don’t have a conversation partner today, but I am going to push my fun meter all the way up to the max. If you’re watching the video version, I’ve got a button it’s sponsored by .BIBLE, the .BIBLE project over at American Bible Society. Move the needle from medium to to high all the way out. We’re going to go full tilt on the fun meter today. I love nerding out about some of the stuff. One of the things in our Church Butler digital marketing signature system is the follow up machine at the very end, and that’s using email automation as your tip of the sword in terms of giving first time visitors and converting them into repeat attenders.

Most churches are using some sort of email marketing platforms and perhaps you’re using for your weekly newsletter or special event notices or maybe you send out emails periodically from your lead pastor. But one of the most powerful features that you’re already paying for, for most email marketing systems that you’re not using is a function called an email auto responder, and this is what we’re going to talk about today. We’re talking about pre programmed email sequences, and if you’re not taking advantage of this side of your email marketing platform, you’re missing out on a huge, huge, huge opportunity in my humble opinion, to help your ministry flourish. We want to use technology to scale personal relationships and so there’s many ways to do that. Some of them is for church growth, some for internal purposes. I wanted to share with you just five email automation processes that your church should have up and running and installed today.

If you don’t have these five things, you should take some notes and put them on your to-do list for this coming week and get this done. They’re all pretty easy to do and they’re all impactful and going to give you long term results in terms of cultivating your audiences, etc. So let’s just get right into it. The first thing for coaching clients and partners that I like to say is the first email automation sequences should have installed is your Happy Birthday sequences. Everybody likes being recognized on the birthday, right? And today in social media, it is the obligatory behavior to say happy birthday to somebody in your friend network when Facebook prompts you saying that, hey, it’s Kenny’s birthday today. Say happy birthday to them and then you have a whole slew of Facebook messages that clog up the person’s stream telling them how great they are, how important they are, etc.

It’s just trite and you know, to me inauthentic, right? Because Facebook’s prompting you to do it. You didn’t really remember their friend’s birthday, but it’s so ubiquitous and it’s lost its real social value in relationship. So, sending a personalized email on, or sometimes I even like to do it the day before someone’s birthday, something that will typically stand out. Now this is an easy process for email automation to take and manage. And it’s a process where anybody that gets put into your database with their email address, you’re asking for their birthday and then it triggers this sequence, you know, your job is simply to come up with a dozen or so different, unique creative, happy birthday messages that you can write. Some of them might be long and some may be short and sweet, but you want differentiation in your birthday messages so that year in, year out as the sequence rolls on, you’re not going to be sending the same exact message to somebody, right?

So you want to use technology to scale personalized relationships, and having that variation of messages and definitely what you would do and you want to mimic that behavior here. So you can also remember to use the functions, the functionality that’s available in most email merge and email marketing applications like inserting variables into the message. So you can do things like inserting the first name or inserting the location of where they live, where their state and you know one of the most powerful places to do it, in the subject line, right? You can put the person’s name in the subject line so they’ll open up Happy Birthday Kenny, Happy Birthday Mary. That’s the first place that you could probably use one of these variable functions. And again, pre=writing a bunch of different messages once allows you to set it and forget it.

You will avoid sending the same message multiple years in a row. You will avoid missing sending messages to people on your list, you get it done, you set it up, easy-peasy. So here’s you know, a great example, right? where you could have differentiation in the messages that you report something on video, put it up on YouTube or Vimeo, and then you embed that video into the email, and it might be a wacky rendition of happy birthday. You might be in a costume or a suit or something just really quirky that shows off your personality. But it’s something that someone will remember and note because it’s one message that will stand out during that day as they’re deluded, where there is a deluge of messages on Facebook and social media. So offering to take that person out to a cup of coffee is a great thing, especially if you’re talking from the pastor or connections coordinator or campus pastor or a life group leader, from a church point of view that’s great. If, again, another piece of automation that you should do for scheduling time with people is use the service. I personally use Time Trade. There’s other services like You Can Book Me or collins.ly that hooked into your calendar with appointments spots that are offered on a dynamic basis and just automate that whole process of setting up a time to meet with somebody. So again, this is another way to personalize that offer wishing them a happy birthday and say you’d like to take them out for breakfast or coffee or something and asking them to set up a time, here’s the link to do that, that’d be great.

Number two in the ideas for using email automation process in your church will be a First Time Visitor Welcome Series. If you have a connection card, you’re taking people’s information. If you have a clipboard or that first time visitor form, you’re collecting contact information on a regular basis. I know it. Most of the time a lot of these contact cards have overkill, you’re asking for their whole resume and their CIA, dossier on who their profiles. But one of the things that you are collecting hopefully is their email address. You want to minimize what you’re collecting, but whatever you collect, you should be using. So again here you can pre-write a series of emails that are geared toward developing that relationship. Remember it’s called social media with the word social in it for a reason. Developing that relationship between you and the church and the first time visitor. You can use it to help prepare information in the email sequence that educates them about the church and the resources and the ministries and the opportunities for them to get plugged in. You can invite them to future specific events because email sequences allow you to program date specific as well as time delay based scheduling. And then you have the ability to use the technology to basically scale your personal relationship in a way by sharing information about you and all these messages, but in each of those messages are periodically offering an open ended call to action for them to reply and respond so that you personally see those messages and can respond to them on an ad hoc basis. For some churches that we’ve worked with, we’ve actually produced, you’ll be surprised, a full year worth of follow up email sequence and contents to send that first time visitor to the church. You can see some samples on our website www.butler.church/email automation, and it’s something that’s smart. You can set it, forget it, and make sure everyone that comes in the doors when you capture their information and put them into this email sequence and you treat them like VIP’s in building and nurturing that relationship.

Okay, number three on the list of email sequences that you should be installing into your system to this week is a First Time Giver Sequence. First time someone gives to your ministry is a big deal. They’ve made that choice consciously. It’s not frivolous and you need to appreciate and recognize that both on an immediate and long term basis, right? So the immediate basis is talking about not just the receipts, the tax deductible receipt that you’re going to give them, but giving them a personal thank you message so you can write a series of emails that helps basically increase the confidence for the decision they just made and cultivate them into from a one time giver into a recurring giver.

This is a chance to help set the culture of generosity with the people choose to give to your church. It’s a chance to put on display all the work that your church does, say outside the walls of your building, your outreach, your mercy and justice ministries, your missions work, things that you guys are doing to help renew the city that you live in. It’s a chance to recognize that your church or ministry would not be able to happen without the partnership and support of your donors, your high capacity givers of people you want to recognize and appreciate. Thank you notes and a sequence of emails that helps them understand where their money goes once they give and if it makes a difference at all is something that many organizations don’t do well and it’s an opportunity for you to have excellence and consistency by setting up a well-written first time giver email sequence.

Next we have as number four on the list is Topical Devotional Series. Now, if you have the time and energy to personal disciple, every person that comes through the doors of the church, I’m sure you would jump at that opportunity. That is what church is for, we want one-on-one relationships. However, that just is not practical to give that deep, deep one-on-one relationship to every single person that comes to the door many times. Now, a very small step to help that in using technology to scale the personal relationships is to curate a series of life serving, inspirational spiritual content such as a mini devotional series that sent out around a topic. Think about now the felt needs in your community, you can think about the common issues and topics that come up on a regular basis, and counselling and people who reach out to you in terms of pastoral aspect.

If you think about sub segments of your community population now, once you set up a devotional sequence, you have the ability to refer to it on an ongoing basis in the future. You can have a signup page on your website. It could actually also be a secret hidden internal page that you or one of your support team members can sign people up you know, on a manual basis, on an ongoing basis. But whatever the need and relevance there is that you have a devotional for whenever you meet someone that has a match in terms of that felt need, you can send people that way so that they get immersed with supportive content in this devotional series that will show that you understand where they are empathetically and giving them the actual, you know, spiritual support in terms of bible engagement. That’s something that you can do in terms of a devotional series.

Now this could be a series of written emails, It could be a series of audio messages, It could be a video series. But taking the time to invest in setting up a short, now we’re talking about short devotionals. Maybe it’s a five day devotional, maybe it’s a seven day devotional, maybe it’s a weekly devotional for two or three months on given topics and showing them the glory that God has a pathway out of darkness into the light for whatever real circumstance that they have. This is something that truly can be powerful and using email automation is a great way to do that.

Last one in our five different email automation sequences that you must have up and running for your church is a, what I call a Staff DNA Email Sequence. Now, whether you use this as you bring in all your new hires, all the new team members that get added to your staff now and in the future, or you can use it before all current members on your team go to the next milestone in their employment with you. You can make sure everybody else internally currently on the team gets exposed to it, so everyone is on the same page and has the same basically leadership DNA in terms of what your vision and outlook is for how ministry should be done from your church, your organization, your team. The Staff DNA Sequence, this can be critical in helping set, you can talk about vision, you can help shape culture. Again, it’s a way to consistently provide some training development about the ground rules, the basics, the culture, the little things that don’t make it to the staff meetings, but are important to discuss and disseminate and give examples of, so that everyone is empowered and have freedom because they have more definition and more confidence of what they understand the core DNA of the church should be. Being able to parse out the different pillars of the core DNA of the church is something that an email sequence, you know, automation can help provide.

And sharing, explaining each one in a separate email basically will free you up to focus on the relational one on one, things that pop up versus trying to get to those FAQ, those the foundational pillar content. You can focus your one-on-one time on unique things and focusing on the person versus just constantly try to deliver what the ground rules are for being a part of the staff or key volunteer or a committed member of the community.

So there you go, five must have email sequences that I think your church really needs to have set up and installed today, and if you don’t have it today, put it on the calendar, your to-do list for next week, but I hope this list helps kick start your brainstorming for how to start using the email automation function of the platform that you probably already use and pay for day in, day out.

Almost always, you’ve got to remember more communication, more transparency will help support a healthy team culture and atmosphere. And this is what I’m trying to get out, Email automation is one of your secret weapons in your back pocket that you can do to be consistent in sharing information with your different audiences across your community. Employing the consistency that automation provides, ensures that everyone’s on the same page, it ensures that no one gets left out and it again and ensures that there’s no gaps in dissemination of the core information out there. The obligatory question at the end that everyone asked me is, what’s your favorite email marketing platform? There used to be, there were really high-end expensive ones like HubSpot, Eloqua, Magenta, etc. But nowadays you know, I personally use Infusionsoft, which tends to be amongst the high-end set, but nowadays there’s a lot more accessible software packages out there, Active Campaign is one, Drip is another.

I think one of the most popular ones is Mailchimp, which is free for entry level. However, there are limitations, I’ll flag that I’m not 100% of Mailchimp fan. You get what you pay for, when you’re getting a free product and sometimes as you grow and if you’re committed to growth, you will run into some little bit of conundrums as you grow with Mailchimp versus some of the other email platforms out there. So, if you’re a smaller church or you’re starting at email for the first time, usually, we recommend Active Campaign or a service called Drip, that’s another one as a good starting point to check out if you have the funds available. Infusionsoft is a great answer as well. So, we’d love to hear what other email automation topics and uses you’ve seen work well in other churches or you might have installed already for your own church.

Do me a favor, leave a comment below or reach out to me on social media. Twitter’s the best way or our Facebook pages and even chiming in our Social Media for Churches with Church Butler, a Facebook group on Facebook. That’s a great way to extend the conversation here. Want to thank you so much for continuing to listen to our Podcast. I’m wondering if you could do us a favor and help us reach more church leaders out there with the resources and topics that we’re covering here on the Lunch and Learns. If you wouldn’t mind leaving a review on iTunes is one of the most impactful and powerful ways that you can help in getting this word out is to leave a review on iTunes of what you’re learning and what you get out of the Lunch and Learn Podcast. Another way is to just share it with a friend.

Remember, we’re on iTunes, Stitcher Radio, Google Play, even on Alexa. You can ask Alexa to play the Church Butler Lunch and Learn Podcasts and Alexa should play the latest episode for you. We’re trying to learn, you know, how to get the word out by syndicating their account content further and further. The latest one we added this past month is Spotify. So no excuses, we’re trying to be anywhere and everywhere that you and your friends are, please help us get the word out. I’m Kenny Jahng, until next time here on the Church Butler Lunch and Learn Podcast, be social and remember, stay social.

]]>https://www.butler.church/lunch-learn-5-email-automation-sequences-your-church-should-have-running-today-podcast/feed/03 Things Hillsong Church Gets Right on Sundayshttps://www.butler.church/hillsong-first-impressions/
https://www.butler.church/hillsong-first-impressions/#respondSun, 22 Jul 2018 16:25:10 +0000https://www.butler.church/?p=10761I remember meeting Brian Houston and Carl Lentz back several years ago at Wave Church Conference in Virginia Beach, Virginia. They were speaking in the USA while making their way towards NYC.

WHY NYC? Because they were planting a church in the US for the first time. It was going to be a year or two out. But the enthusiasm swelled so quickly that they ended up launching much sooner than they anticipated to lines around the block.

What kind of church has lines and ticketing to get in in today’s world?

Say hello to Hillsong NYC.

Right from the beginning, this church has understood how to attract today’s generation. They are connecting in ways that most of the old-line denomination churches haven’t figured out yet.

A couple of years ago, they opened another location here in New Jersey.

Every Sunday there two services at the Welmont Theater in Montclair New Jersey.

Having attended several times, I can tell you there is definitely intentionality in how they move through the service from beginning to end.

The growth continues well after the initial launch. If you visit, you can understand quickly why.

3 things that Hillsong Church is doing to grow:

1. THEY ACKNOWLEDGE VISITOR-CENTRIC VIEWS THROUGHOUT THE SERVICE.

All of the hosting from the stage whether it be the Welcome, Offering, or other parts (including giving out free gifts from the stage to visitors who have only come 1, 2, or 3 times to date), are spoken with language that explicitly calls out that you may be a new visitor.

It helps set expectations, lowers anxiety about what’s happening now or next in the service, etc.

Even as you leave the service, there are tons of volunteers and staff holding up free Bibles (cool paperback Bibles that don’t look like old school Bibles) for you to take with you. The point is they make it easy for you to get on board.

2. THERE IS AN ALTER CALL IN EVERY SERVICE.

The point here isn’t that they insert an altar call into the order of service.

The point is that the entire service seems to be oriented for that first time visitor or person who is questioning Jesus.

This essentially means the entire worship service is presented so that the lens of the outsider makes sense. While you might think there is a Holy Huddle, the Hillsong team does a great job to acknowledge the new church goer at various points.

By the time the altar call is made, it is a natural milestone in the service.

3. THEY SPELL OUT NEXT STEP OPTIONS CLEARLY.

Both are in the corporate prayer time, and at the end of the service after that also called before dismissal, they put explicit details up on the screen so there is clarity on what they are asking you to do from the stage.

If you were not able to follow along with the horses and saying, this is a great reminder especially for homes that do you want to take the next step, but don’t want to be embarrassed about knowing who to ask, what to ask, etc.

Again, they make it as easy as possible for you to get on board.

What is clear overall is that they are not in a holy huddle. This church service is built in a way that acknowledges, welcomes and guides new visitors along throughout the service from end to end.

That is why people return and why the church is growing.

WHAT US ONE THING YOU WISH YOUR CHURCH CAN CHANGE TO BETTER WELCOME VISITORS?

]]>https://www.butler.church/hillsong-first-impressions/feed/07 Answers You Can Respond With To Any Engaging Question On Instagram:https://www.butler.church/7-answers-you-can-respond-with-to-any-engaging-question-on-instagram/
https://www.butler.church/7-answers-you-can-respond-with-to-any-engaging-question-on-instagram/#commentsTue, 17 Jul 2018 23:22:22 +0000https://www.butler.church/?p=10746My friend Seth Muse over at the Seminary of Hard Knocks recently published 9 Engaging Questions to Ask on Instagram.

In jest, I told him I would publish this list:

7 Answers You Can Respond With To Any Engaging Question On Instagram:

1. Interesting indeed. Given that you are asking this question, is there anything I can pray for you?

2. In the end, do you have any recommendation for me to take it from here?

3. That’s a great question, but don’t you think there’s a much better question you could be asking right now?

4. For right now, I am seeing truth in Philippians 4:11

5. I can understand why you’re asking that question. But can you share the why behind it?

6. Is there a book or podcast you think would be a good resource to help me with this?

7. Not sure how I should respond to this one.

Here’s my engaging question:

WHAT RESPONSE AM I MISSING IN THIS LIST?

There are many people out there touting that they can help you figure out how to increase engagement on social media. I used to say that a ? is greater than a period. And you hear people say all the time you should ask engaging open ended questions so that it reels people in.

But the secret to getting engagement is not just publishing questions.

The secret is actually the opposite: it is to answer and respond to other people’s posts. Constantly.

Time and time again I have gotten on the radar of someone that I want to connect with, whether it be an author, a leader, speaker, consultant, etc. One of the easiest ways is if they blog regularly. All you need to do is follow along, and comment thoughtfully in response to each of the posts that they publish for a certain timeframe. Many times in as little as a few weeks or a month, you can connect and develop a relationship with someone you don’t know personally at the beginning of the process.

You can do the same thing on someone’s Facebook page, group or feed.

You can do the same thing on someone’s Instagram feed.

Just think about it for second. If you are publishing and trying to build a platform, and you are engaging with your “tribe” and audience. It is relatively easy to notice when the same person shows up periodically on a regular basis versus all the random drive-by visitors who comment once and never again.

Even if there’s a healthy amount of discussion on a person’s or brand’s platform, how many people consistently show up with thoughtful and encouraging responses in the comments sections or DM’s. Over and over and over?

Do that on a very regular basis and in the short period of time, you will get on the radar of that brand or personality. That’s where you can start to have a relationship outside the public publish and comments/feedback channels.